SABC's 24hr channel requires clarity

South African Broadcasting Corporation's (SABC's) decision to launch its 24-hour news channel on pay-TV MultiChoice's platform needs clarity on its business case. 

This is particularly necessitated as free-to-air e.tv offered the public broadcaster the prime first three channels of its soon-to-be launched satellite TV service at discounted rates.

I have written to the Minister of Communications, Yunus Carrim, asking him to publicly clarify whether Acting Chief Operations Officer Hlaudi Motsoeneng had the approval of either himself or the previous Minister to negotiate and sign a deal of this magnitude and the expected financial benefits that are expected to accrue from it. 

In the letter, I requested that Minister Carrim clarify:

• why the SABC turned down e.tv's offer to use its satellite broadcast platform for its new channels;
• whether he, the previous minister and the four-member SABC interim board was aware of e.tv's offer to share its satellite platform;
• whether National Treasury approved the MultiChoice deal in terms of the R1,4 billion loan guarantee financing the corporation's turnaround strategy and whether Nedbank, to whom the loan is being repaid, was consulted; and
• how these pay-to-view news and entertainment channels serve the SABC's public broadcast mandate.

I have also asked the Minister to produce the Business Plan on which the MultiChoice deal was based and state whether this was evaluated and approved by National Treasury before the deal was signed.

The previous board, which collapsed when the ANC instructed its deployees to resign in March, rejected previous attempts by the SABC's executive management to ram through approval of the 24-hour news channel because it was prohibitively expensive and that the structural issues that landed the public broadcaster in a financial crisis have not been satisfactorily corrected.

The board wanted a deal with better terms, which Motsoeneng may now claim he has. But these terms were probably negotiated before the SABC was offered the first three channel positions on the satellite TV platform that e.tv and Platco plan to launch in October.

The public broadcaster was offered these prime free-to-air channels at standard definition rates despite the fact that the broadcasts would be in high definition. This would probably be significantly cheaper than the terrestrial transmission rates SABC will pay once it goes digital.

The fact that the 24-hour news  and entertainment  channels are to be broadcast on a pay-platform may be in contravention of its public broadcasting mandate, and possibly undermine its much-delayed transition to digital terrestrial broadcasting.

I will also ask the chairperson of the Portfolio Committee on Communications, Mr Sikhumbuzo Kholwane, to convene an urgent hearing at which the Minister, the Department of Communications, the SABC and e.tv account for the current state of the transition to digital terrestrial broadcasting (DTT) as the programme seems to be in disarray and stakeholders - such as set-top box manufacturers - are in a state of uncertainty.

The SABC is facing a number of crises that are likely to be exacerbated by the impact of the MultiChoice deal: 

• it is haemorrhaging money paying for a bloated staff complement;
• executive management is weak;
• a new board has to be appointed and get up to speed;
• there is little development of new content to attract viewers to its digital channels; 
• the digital library which will convert archive material to digital format for transmission on its new channels has not received the required funding from National Treasury;
• no government departments are developing inter-active websites for broadcast on the digital platform; and
• the SABC  faces stiff competition from e.tv's free-to-air satellite platform as advertisers will be tempted to follow audiences who are likely to be attracted to fresh content on the new platform.

There are now serious doubts about the SABC's commitment to the transition to its digital terrestrial television strategy and the local assembly of set-top boxes - millions of which will be subsidised by the taxpayer - that are necessary to receive SABC and e.tv's free-to-air programmes  via digital signals on analogue TV sets.

Statement issued by Marian Shinn MP, DA Shadow Minister of Communications, July 29 2013

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