The Independent Producers’ Organisation (IPO) has launched a campaign to save the SABC. We agree that it is time to draw back from the welter of condemnation attaching itself to the national broadcaster and its crises, and ask instead how we can rescue what is one of our most important cultural assets, one that reaches into the homes of the poorest of our communities.
But the current financial mess cannot be solely attributed to onerous public broadcasting requirements. The board is duty-bound to put the SABC’s own house in order – and deal with those responsible for mismanagement – before the corporation can, with good conscience, retrench thousands of staffers lower down the pecking order, or receive protection from the Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA), or financial backing from the government.
The fact is that while there have been some brave and often acknowledged improvements, the SABC has failed to deliver comprehensively on the type of programming required from a public broadcaster and is now resorting to an approach that is based only on ratings, strangling what remains of public service television.
Saving the SABC does not mean preserving the corporation’s current format. It needs to downsize, cutting both the size of its bureaucracy and the number of its television channels from three to two. The requirement that television deal equitably with all 11 languages needs to be re-examined along with the government and the IBA, and other options – like regional broadcasting and radio – need to be looked at.
The licence fee system should be scrapped as it will never work, and a device for the government to support the SABC financially – by paying the piper without calling the tune – needs to be carefully worked out.
The SABC needs competition. The corporation’s call for the IBA to block a rival free television station has not improved the public’s low regard for the ailing broadcaster. The image beloved of talk-show jocks and their callers is of a monopolistic monster gobbling up the licence payers’ hard-earned rands in its relentless pursuit of mediocrity.
But what is not noted is that those who are bidding for the new free-to-air channel are demanding that they not be subject to any public service obligations. As the IPO points out, television is not a free market. Whoever wins the licence to broadcast will have a special, protective privilege and will have an obligation to provide a range of services in the public interest.
It is time to restore some perspective to the debate. If the welter of public condemnation succeeds in bringing the national broadcaster to its knees, replaced by “commercial” channels offering nothing more edifying than American schlock and third-rate sitcoms like Suburban Bliss, we will all be the poorer. The SABC needs to be nurtured, not destroyed. If it has not fulfilled the role envisaged for it when it emerged from decades of faithful service to apartheid, we should ask why, and find new ways of making it work.