Jacquie Golding-Duffy
SABC board member Allister Sparks is seeking business from the corporation for his Johannesburg-based Institute for the Advancement of Journalism (IAJ).
Sparks this week confirmed that he has submitted a proposal to the SABC offering to train radio and television journalists at the IAJ’s plush Parktown offices.
Sparks says there is no conflict of interest involved in offering to train journalists, despite being a SABC board member and the IAJ’s executive director: “We are a non-profit organisation and are the only one of its kind in the country and in Africa to provide this type of training.”
It is believed that Sparks submitted a proposal to the SABC’s training and development department during the middle of last year, estimating a cost of R1-million for training presenters over a period of eight months.
However, Sparks this week denied that the proposal had anything to do with training of presenters or continuity announcers. He also denied having set down a specific period of time. “The institute trains only journalists and three-quarters through last year, we submitted updated costings to the SABC … like we do to newspaper corporations, informing them that our fees have increased for 1997,” he said.
Sparks says he sent in a proposal to inform the SABC of the new fees, adding that the figure of R1-million was neither here nor there.
At a time when the SABC is supposed to be cutting costs, training at an alleged cost of R1-million together with the expenses incurred of keeping 32 continuity announcers would not assist in streamlining operations.
SABC head of communications Enoch Sithole says the corporation is planning a cadet school of its own and was unaware of Sparks’s proposal. He argues that presenters are important for the SABC’s three channels as they personalise individual channels and training was crucial for staffers.
“Each channel has a different identity and this is reflected in the clothes and on- camera look of each announcer,” says Sithole, adding that the costs are not that great since presenters work on a contract basis. It is believed that fees range between R300 and R700 for a five to six- hour shift.
This, argues Sithole, is very cost- effective. However, some image consultants responsible for training presenters argue otherwise.
M-Net celebrity presenter and trainer of continuity announcers, Nadia Bilchik argues that although presenters are important to personalise and localise television content, the cost is exorbitant when compared with voice-overs.
“With presenters you must think about wardrobe, make-up, hair, lighting, camera and so on. Here is a person in a studio who has to be paid for his or her time alongside cameramen and soundmen,” she says.
But image is clearly more important than cost-effectiveness as the SABC chooses to use presenters, rather than voice-overs.