SABC board chairman Eddie Funde has called for an increase in government funding and a drastic reduction in commercial funding of the public broadcaster.
‘It’s very unusual for the public broadcaster to be 80 percent commercially funded,” Funde told reporters on Thursday morning.
‘It is very hard for the public broadcaster to fulfil its mandate and at the same time having to go around and looking for money. We are working very hard to change that situation.”
Funde said most public broadcasters worldwide relied heavily on government funding and licence fees.
However, South Africa’s poverty levels make it difficult to charge high licence fees.
‘People would rather buy a loaf of bread than pay their licence. In our levels of poverty, people have other priorities.”
SABC’s CEO Dali Mpofu said ‘there is a national consensus that there should be more public funding” but the details of an ideal funding model still needed to be thrashed out.
‘We are looking really at some government funding, increasing licence fees and drastically reducing commercial funding,” said Funde.