In March this year, new licence conditions for SABC television and radio came into effect, increasing its local content quota and consequently increasing pressure on the broadcaster.
The Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa) requires 35 percent of SABC drama to be South African, 80 percent of its current affairs programmes and 50 percent of its documentaries must also be local. Educational and children’s programmes require local content of 60 and 55 percent respectively.
Following a protest on the non-payment of filmmakers commissioned to produce documentaries on June 16, there has been a lot of speculation as to whether the SABC will be able to meet its new quotas.
“The current system is fraught with problems,” says Nicola Rauch, national secretary of The South African Screen Federation and co-chair of the Motion Picture Trainers Association.
“In truth, the content hub has commissioned way more work than the financial and legal structures can handle. So producers end up cash-flowing their productions for a few months. Not many young black producers can do this, so they go under. Transformation is severely threatened by this status quo.”
In the past year and a half alone, the SABC commissioned 180 locals, the bulk of which being factual, entertainment and drama.
“With the increased number of local content, the SABC’s operations and systems were overwhelmed, but new processes are being instituted to alleviate the problem,” says commissioning manager at SABC Content Hub, David Makubyane, acknowledging that there is a problem.
Armour Elliot-Setter of The Excellence Factory says lack of human resources is not the only problem plaguing the broadcaster. Red tape, she says, is hindering good quality programming.
“There are many small companies that don’t have credentials such as being BEE compliant where you find there is only one person involved. But the SABC does not recognise that or even go through what that company has produced in the past to see if it’s capable or not.”
She says the broadcaster is not sympathetic towards one-man owned production companies that employ camera or sound people of colour.
Makubyane denies this and points out that in their last commissioning cycle, 32 percent completely white-owned companies were commissioned to produce for the SABC.
“BEE is a part of our mandate as it is or should be for any South African company in this day and age. We, however, do put our editorial, concepts and SABC mandate and goals ahead of what you call ‘red tape’,” he says.
“As a matter of fact our requirements are there to ensure development, equity, transparency and fairness within the procurement of local content and the industry at large.”
The commissioning process at the SABC is managed from one central unit – the Commissioning and Special projects Unit – and all the channels’ content goes through the same commissioning processes via this unit.
Neither M-Net nor e.tv have standard commissioning procedures. Both say the procedures depend on the kind of content being commissioned.
Rauch says if the SABC had a different budget system, things would be different. She says the current system takes no account of the “professionalisation” of the industry and merely looks at a per minute bottom line.
Chairman of the Documentary Filmmakers Association, Pule Diphare, says producers should point the at themselves as well.
“They should actually be asking themselves what it is that they are doing that is adding to problems at the SABC. I mean the broadcaster can also lodge complaints against us for lack of professionalism, late delivery, and so forth. There are problems I admit, but they can’t be put on the door step of one party,” says Diphare, adding that most issues that reach the media are emotionally driven.
He says at the root of the industry’s problems is the prevalent sense of entitlement compounded by the “victim syndrome” that makes people not want to take responsibility for their actions.
“I mean, how can you take out a loan to make a film without a signed contract from the broadcaster?,” asks Diphare.
“Filmmaking is a business where ideas are sold and we need to approach it with the same business acumen as that of any other businessman.”
The lack of capacity at the hub has also meant that production companies involved in pitches seldom, if ever, get informed if their proposal was unsuccessful, say Rauch and Elliot-Setter.
“Often a commission is given to a producer only weeks ahead of transmission date, and contracting and cash flow have still not been finalised. And a producer will rarely turn down a project, for financial reasons, so the project starts on the back foot.”
Makubyane says the standard practice is for companies involved in the pitching process to be notified, via post, fax or email, two weeks after the pitching session whether or not they have been short-listed.
“Briefs are attended to in order of priority – in other words the concepts that need to go to air first will and should be attended to before.”
Hugh Farrell, director of sales and production at RedCherry Productions which brought us Coca-Cola Popstars, says the main problem is that most them, especially the small ones, do not understand how each broadcaster and channel operates and that the procedures are different.
“Once commissioned, make time to know the relevant people involved, which is what most small companies don’t do. You have to know the back in, in order to get the front in. After all, the SABC is a huge organisation,” he says. “You have to know who the correct people to talk to are. If they are not there, know who their back-ups are. Life is as difficult as you make it.”
So is the SABC likely to meet its new and increased television content quota?
Not if the industry does not pull itself together, says Diphare.
“The bottom line is that there has been an increase in programmes commissioned from small production companies covering all types of empowerment deals. And we need to acknowledge that.”
He says the four-tier commissioning system the content hub operates on leaves little room for exploitation.
“The SABC works on a four-tier system wich gives producers the option to either be commissioned by the SABC and let them have 100 percent copyright over the work, or you can license it to them.
You can also strike a co-production deal with them or send them unsolicited work and they will tell you, the same idea, if that is what they want.”
SABC content hub’s Makubyane says they are definitely moving forward in increasing not only local content and the quality of it.
Icasa spokesman Jubie Matlou says it would be premature to judge the public broadcaster given that it only got its new license conditions six months ago.
Icasa is expected to come to an agreement with the SABC on the monitoring methodology for the public broadcaster this month.
M-Net on the other hand – with a required quota of 20 percent local drama programming, 30 percent local documentary and informal knowledge-building programming, and a 25 percent quota for children’s programming – has met all these requirements.
M-Net’s director of regulatory affairs, Karen Willenberg says initially they encountered many obstacles in meeting the required ratio. She cites the industry’s lack of skills to produce quality local content programming as one of them.
“Given the challenges currently facing the broadcasting industry – the convergence of technologies and the migration of broadcasting from analogue to digital, the quotas will have to be reviewed. The current quotas will need to evolve for a multi-channel, digital environment.”
M-Net currently spends in excess of R100 million per year on local content in open time alone. Willenberg says their local content spend has quadrupled in the past five years.
E.tv’s head of local programming, Zanele Nthembu, said she could not comment on the article because she had only recently taken up her position.