SARAH BULLEN, Cape Town | Wednesday 3.00pm
THE Cape High Court on Wednesday postponed an urgent application for the liquidation of Midi TV, majority holding company of fledgling e.tv.
The application was brought by television production company Sprockets, listed as Channel 69, which produces five hours of Deadtime programme material for e.tv a day. The programme was cut two weeks ago.
In its application the company claims the station is in arrears to the tune of some R5,5-million for two months worth of material supplied.
A source at Sprockets said that e.tv is claiming that it is withholding payment because Sprockets was in breach of contract. Sprockets claims, however, that e.tv is in financial trouble and trying to hold off paying creditors.
e.tv spokesman Kanthan Pillay said, however, that e.tv has never had a contract with Sprocket.
Postponing the case on Wednesday, Judge Wilf Thring said that the application had been accompanied by over 800 pages of documentation which had been handed to him on Tuesday.
He postponed the hearing to November 11 in order to allow himself time to prepare. This means that next week e.tv will have two hearings on its hands. The second is its hearing before the Independent Broadcasting Authority which is set to hear an application by Midi to amend e.tv’s broadcasting licence. The hearing is not to revoke e.tv’s licence, but to determine whether licence conditions stipulating the percentage of local content can be altered.
It is widely speculated that Midi, which won the fiercely fought bid for the first free-to-air television licence in 1998, has serious funding problems. Its ad sales have been slow and it has been plagued by a series of high-profile resignations and a standoff between its two union-dominated shareholders — Hosken Consolidated Investments and Vula Communications.
Pillay said that Sproket’s claim that e.tv can’t pay it are ridiculous, bearing in mind the backing it has in the form on HCI and international partner Time Warner. In an interview with Financial Mail in October, CEO Marcel Golding said that HCI, which owns 34% of e.tv equity, can cover all e.tv’s capital requirements for the next 12-18 months.