The IBA has made its report: now the lobbying begins, reports Neil Bierbaum
Fierce lobbying is expected in response to the Independent Broadcasting Authority’s report on television. Prospective commercial broadcasters want the licensing of a commercial television channel to happen sooner, while the SABC will lobby to retain its third channel. But even if prospective commercial broadcasters are successful, practical considerations make it unlikely that another terrestrial TV channel would be operational before the second half of 1996.
The IBA has proposed that a commercial TV channel be licensed to broadcast from the beginning of 1998, at which stage it recommends that the SABC should give up its third channel.
“Nobody has the power to change [our] decision,” says IBA councillor William Lane. “The IBA has the final say over licensing. It would be a novel situation if Parliament were to direct us to issue the licence any sooner.”
In his opinion Parliament can comment on the funding and viability of the public broadcaster and on cross-media ownership, but not on the licensing issue.
Nevertheless the parliamentary select committee on communications is expected to call for written submissions to be handed in by October 15 1995. Thereafter the committee will call for oral submissions. “We are not reopening the IBA Inquiry,” says chairperson Saki Macozoma. “We will allow the public to comment and make proposals on the recommendations of the IBA.”
It is expected that these submissions will call for the earlier licensing of a commercial TV channel.
William Kirsh, managing director of Primedia Limited, says that “as a major commercial broadcaster in South Africa we will try to influence the regulators in terms of what we think is best for the industry”.
According to Peter Matlara, strategic planner for Primedia Broadcasting, “The public will voice its opinion on the extent to which the IBA has addressed the public interest. If Parliament is to fund the public broadcaster, it must agree with what it is to fund, and it must decide whether the industry could support another channel.” Macozoma concurs. “It is debatable whether the IBA can disregard the views of Parliament that are consistent with the provisions of the IBA and the Constitution. The IBA exercises its authority within the parameters set by Parliament,” he says.
The granting of a private TV licence will be affected by the fact that the SABC is to lobby to retain its three channels. The IBA report recommended that the third channel be relinquished at the end of 1997 to a private broadcaster. According to chief operating officer at the SABC, Gert Claasen, the SABC will argue that the SABC needs the third channel to adequately fulfil its public service mandate. However it is unlikely that the IBA will capitulate. It will have to licence a private channel and, as Lane points out, “In our view it is dubious whether a fourth channel would be viable. At most we could give the SABC one more year.” In this case there would be a one year overlap between the third channel and the commercial channel.
If the third SABC channel was allowed to continue broadcasting while a new licensee came on air, the signal distributor would have to install a new network. This would have significant cost implications and, if Sentech was chosen as the signal distributor for the new channel, it would be left with a spare network capacity if the SABC channel was closed down. This would not make economic sense. Setting up the new network would also take a number of months and would further delay the time between the granting of a licence and the ability of the channel to broadcast.
Another factor affecting the timing of the licensing will be the Parliamentary process. “The IBA can [only] grant a commercial licence after Parliament has considered and made its pronuncement on the triple inquiry report,” says Macozoma. Other legislation may also be necessary. Local government elections and the backlog of unpassed legislation dictates that Parliament is unlikely to pass the necessary legislation arising out of the IBA report before January or February next year. Only at that stage would the IBA be in a position to call for licence applications. “Our intention is to bring our recommendations to Parliament in the first week of the next session of the House,” says Macozoma.
Even if licence applications were called for in the first quarter of 1996, they would probably take a few months before they were issued. The successful applicant would then have to prepare programming and the transmitter network would also have to be set up. Given these considerations, the most optimistic scenario for new commercial television channel to be on air is late 1996 or early 1997.