Hogging the headlines about the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) in recent times has been the resignation of the broadcaster’s CEO, Peter Matlare, and speculation about his successor.
Less noticed, a more fundamental issue has been the future viability of the public broadcaster.
In fact, so big is this viability issue that the question is whether Matlare chickened out — not so much from engaging the politics of the SABC, but when he saw the stress required to steer the broadcaster through the next crucial years.
Whoever takes his job will face the fundamental tension of running a public broadcaster service through commercial means. But what has raised the stakes higher than ever is the imminent prospect of the SABC having to play by detailed rules that have been absent thus far.
The new ball game was put on the table by the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa) last month, in the form of draft licence conditions for the SABC’s outlets. Its proposed rules set out in some detail which SABC stations are supposed to do the public service work — and what this means — and which of them will make the money to pay for this, and within what parameters.
Complicating the distinction between the public and commercial wings, the draft licences perpetuate the fuzziness endemic to the SABC model. Thus, all public-service stations — despite their core mission — are nonetheless still licensed to make money through selling advertising. And commercial television (that is, SABC3) is still required to do loads of public service.
The government declared in the 2002 Broadcasting Amendment Act that the SABC should be reorganised into the public-service and commercial divisions, with the latter then cross-subsidising the former.
Explaining to Icasa last year how this split should be licensed, the SABC itself described its situation as ”invidious”. It said it has to compete commercially and simultaneously fulfil a public-service mandate. And for this reason, continued the national broadcaster, Icasa should leave well enough alone.
The corporation’s message thus was: allow us get on with the balancing act in the tried-and-tested way — which is as we see fit.
To support its pitch, the SABC stated that despite ”frequent changes of leadership … funding difficulties, internal restructuring and refinements in national policy”, the corporation has nevertheless been able to achieve its public and business objectives.
We are, the SABC said, successfully serving our audience as ”both citizens and consumers”. In other words, we ain’t broke, so don’t try to fix us.
Many disagreed. Five private-sector broadcasters claimed the corporation was a profit-oriented monopoly that made its money through unfair competition with them. Three NGOs told Icasa that the SABC was pursuing Mammon at the expense of doing its public-service job. All wanted detailed public strictures enforced on the SABC through the licences.
Unfazed, the SABC stood by its argument. The new licences should give it the ”flexibility” to continue to make sufficient money to run its services. Indeed, according to the corporation, it already accounts for these services — not to the regulator, but to its own board and in the terms of its legislated charter and recently developed editorial policies.
King Solomon had an easy ride in comparison with what Icasa had to decide on in this case. But the regulator’s people laboured forth and produced elaborated draft licence conditions for the SABC. These elicited 15 responses, including one from this columnist.
It’s now the SABC’s turn to react to these, and then Icasa hopes to finalise the licence conditions by the end of May. Meanwhile, here’s what the draft licences specify:
Television:
SABC1 and SABC2 are licensed as public services; SABC3 as a commercial service.
Both types of service, however, have many public obligations — which raises the issue of whether there is anything to make SABC1 and SABC2 distinct from SABC3. A summary of the obligations shows up the similarities of the two licence category conditions:
Public TV: SABC 1 and SABC2
Advertising load: Not more than 10 minutes of advertising an hour; not more than 12 minutes in a given hour.
News: One hour a day, including a 30-minute package during prime time.
Information and current affairs: Seven hours a week, two in prime time.
Documentary: Seven hours a week, two in prime time.
Drama: Whole week — 24 hours; prime time — a minimum of five hours.
Education: Six hours a week.
Informal knowledge-building: Fourteen hours a week, two in prime time.
Children: Twelve hours a week when kids are watching.
Commercial TV: SABC3
Advertising load: As above.
News: As above.
Information and current affairs: As above.
Documentary: Five hours, two in prime time.
Drama: Eighteen hours a week, 2,5 in prime time.
Education: No obligations.
Informal knowledge-building: 12 hours, two in prime time.
Children: Rising to six hours, over 18 months; rising to 12 hours over a three-year period.
What all this means is that SABC3 is far from being freed up to concentrate on making money. However, the channel does get a major cost-saving benefit by being licensed to broadcast primarily in English.
Complementing this benefit is the likelihood that, because the licence does not say anything to the contrary, SABC3 will fall under Icasa’s rule of having to carry just 35% local content. In contrast, e.tv — through its own offer at the time of its licence application — remains pegged by the regulator above this minimum, at 45%. SABC3, consequently, can use more cheap imported English-language content than e.tv.
Meanwhile, the likely dispensation for SABC1 and SABC2 is that each must carry 55% local content. Going further, however, Icasa’s draft licences require these two public-service stations to move to a maximum of 80% of Nguni languages on SABC1, and the same regarding other African languages and Afrikaans on SABC2.
In short, costs will be high for the public channels, but Icasa has made it possible for SABC3 to make a very good profit. In addition, the regulator has not banned what the private broadcasters had branded as unfair competition — the three SABC TV channels sharing services, cross-promoting, sharing content and repeats, and cross-advertising.
But one criticism is that Icasa gave no licence provision to prevent SABC1 and SABC2 from adopting a commercial logic indistinguishable from that of SABC3. The result could distort public service by public-services television, for example, neglecting — within their required reach to African language-speakers — the poorest sectors that attract no advertising.
Radio:
Most SABC stations are in the public-service division. Commercial division stations are 5fm, Good Hope FM and Metro FM.
Unlike television, in radio there is a strong difference between the requirements laid down for public-service stations and those for the three commercial ones. Thus, while SABC public radio has numerous obligations; SABC commercial radio has hardly any.
Public radio services
News: One hour a day (90 minutes for SAFM).
Information and current affairs: Thirty minutes to one hour a day (four hours a day for SAFM).
Children’s programming: Thirty minutes to one hour a day (for SAFM, reach two hours over an 18-month period).
Informal knowledge-building programmes: Three hours a week (six hours a week for SAFM).
Education: Five hours a week (four hours a week for SAFM).
Drama: Reaching 30 minutes a day, (in some cases, over an 18-month period).
Commercial radio services
News: Thirty minutes of news a day.
Information and current affairs: No obligations.
Children’s programming: No obligations.
Informal knowledge-building programmes: No obligations.
Education: No obligations.
Drama: No obligations.
The effect here is to give the SABC a free hand to help its three commercial radio stations produce sizeable profits. However, the corporation’s purportedly non-commercial stations may also take advertising, and none in either category has any limits specified for the amount of advertising per hour.
Icasa’s failure to pronounce here is presumably so that the SABC can use its radio portfolio to generate as much revenue as it deems necessary. As in the case of public-service TV, there is nothing to stop public-service radio from becoming overly profit-focused.
Another problematic silence from Icasa is its failure to spell out what is meant by the stipulation, across all of the draft licences, that each SABC outlet must make a ”substantial contribution” to various public-service features inscribed in law. No definition of this phrase probably means that this condition amounts simply to noble sentiment.
Summing up overall, Icasa has tried to assure the national broadcaster’s viability without overly compromising the need for fair competition with other players. The draft conditions seem to be saying to the SABC that it can continue to make money right across the board, but its public-service obligations will, indeed, be defined and tightened.
For the SABC, this is a whole new dispensation to deal with. The broadcaster will have to be accountable in a way it has not been to date.
The draft licences imply that neither the SABC nor private industry got completely what it wanted. But there is a kind of compromise in the interests of each side — and, probably, of the public as well.
It’s likely that apart from a little tweaking, the current draft licences will become the definitive ones.
What will be needed at that point is a superman or -woman at the helm of the SABC — a person who can try to implement these new and elaborated complexities, and make the whole system work.
Oh, by the way, that individual will also need to oversee the development of SABC4 and SABC5 — two entirely new television channels purely in African languages.
The SABC’s new CEO had better not be short of stamina.