Tusi Fokane
There are just days to go before the 30-day Arts Alive Television (ATV) broadcasting licence expires, with-out any part of the promised Johannesburg spring cultural festival being broadcast.
Instead, the programmes packaged for the festival may find a slot on Lesotho Television.
ATV cites a number of reasons for this failure, ranging from its short-term broadcasting licence to lack of interest from advertisers and marketers, who would have provided much-needed revenue to flight the programmes.
The cultural television station, as ATV is dubbed in arts and culture circles, was expected to breathe new life into the neglected community television broadcasting sector and was granted a special events license to broadcast the Arts Alive International Festival, with the endorsement of the Greater Johannesburg Metropolitan Council, the festival’s organiser. The channel was awarded a free-to-air community television broadcasting license and was scheduled to reach 80% of Gauteng’s living rooms during prime time in September.
This was to be the first television initiative dedicated to covering arts and culture in South Africa, with an exciting programme line-up that includes talk shows, news, documentaries and music from the festival.
But with its extended license due to expire on October 29 and with accumulated debts totalling R500000, it is unlikely that audiences in Gauteng will ever see the material that Tshepo Rantho, ATV’s channel manager, had prepared.
Because of the station’s inability to raise even part of the R2,5-million necessary for it to broadcast, ATV has entered into negotiations with Lesotho Television and other regional stations to broadcast the footage outside of South Africa.
Rantho says: “ATV’s failure to go on air is a serious blow to the community television sector.”
He attributes this failure in no small part to the South African business sector’s unwillingness to invest in community media development projects. He says the channel approached numerous corporations who pledged initial support but failed to keep to their word.
“The decision to approach the private sector for sponsorship was taken after negotiations failed with public-sector funding institutions such as the National Arts Council and the National Film and Video Foundation, who said that the project fell outside of the scope of their budgets and funding criteria”.
However, Rantho acknowledges, that ATV has been beset by problems from the start.
Firstly, the licensing application process took longer than anticipated and ATV, which was to have started test transmissions on August 23, was awarded a license only on August 31, a day before it was to go on air.
The protracted licensing process, which was a precondition for investors, meant that ATV had very little time to come up with the money it needed.
Besides this, “some of the potential investors we approached displayed an alarming sense of ignorance in as far as supporting television initiatives”.
Chris Moerdyk, an independent marketing and media consultant, is very critical of the advertisers and marketers. He says there is an incredible amount of “double speak” on the part of businesses, which do not yet see the benefits of supporting local media initiatives.
He says the general media environment is not conducive to the development of a local media industry.
“Advertising revenues have been declining steadily and investors would rather put their money in projects that will bring guaranteed returns.”
Ria Greyling, a media consultant, says the situation can be rectified by educating the public at large about the transformative power of community media. Greyling feels that the advertising industry needs to be educated about community media as a way of investing in alternative forms of communication.
“The problems at ATV,” says a staff member who wishes to remain anonymous, “started way before the channel was even granted a licence.”
ATV’s management took on an ambitious and challenging project without the necessary television broadcasting experience to ensure that the project would get off the ground. Furthermore, ATV lacked a coherent and coordinated marketing and business strategy, which are the cornerstones of any successful operation whether it is based in the community or commercial sector.
Speaking in his personal capacity, Izak Minaar, an SABC television executive, says “there is no perfect model [for community television] so community media practitioners should focus on co-productions that will benefit a wider sector of the community.”