/ 30 June 2008

Community on air

‘I was washing the dishes when I heard that [Independent Communications Authority of South Africa] Icasa had given us the licence,” says Karen Thorne, station director of Cape Town Television (CTT), which received its free-to-air licence on April 25. “I had thought I would throw everything in the air, but I remember it being an anticlimax. I’m not sure why. I’ve been working on community television for 15 years, so when it finally happened, it almost didn’t seem real.”

The mother of three must ensure that the channel is ready to broadcast from August 1, no small task when you consider that her full-time staff is only starting at the beginning of July and she’s still looking for a marketing and advertising sales manager. “Our core funding is only coming through at the end of the month, so the time line between when the money arrives and when we’re obliged to be on air is horrifying. All the work has fallen on a handful of hapless volunteers.”

CTT is South Africa’s second community television channel, following the launch of Soweto TV, which went on air in July last year. To pick up CTT, Capetonians will have to tune their television sets to channel 38 using the “frequency search” function on their remotes. Areas such as Camps Bay, Llandudno or Hout Bay, which don’t have a clear view of the transmitter on Tygerberg Mountain, are unlikely to be able to receive the new channel.

According to Thorne August will just be a test run. “We’ll be looping a single, one-hour programme each week, carrying the station identity, one or two programmes, continuity, a presenter in the studio, a filler, and a promo. It’ll probably run from 6.30pm to 11.30pm, so people can get used to us being on air.”

From September, they’re aiming to screen four to six hours of content a day. “We are looking at a fairly normal programme line-up: sports, business, news. There will be a property show, a tourism show, an arts programme, an NGO spot. What makes us different is the whole aspect of community access and participation. If we do a youth programme, the youth will be involved in making it themselves. We want home videos and a soap-box spot, where people get up and say what they think. We want talk TV. User-generated programming has become the rage with the internet, but it was invented by community TV.”

Seventy percent of the content will be Cape Town specific — “local interests, local issues, local language and local culture” — with the other 30% split between South African and international content. “In Cape Town, we are very provincial. We have our own character that sets us apart. There’s no other city broadcaster here at the moment, so tapping into that has been a long time coming,” says Thorne.

Essentially CTT is offering local filmmakers fame rather than fortune. They’re hoping to sign licensing agreements for existing content, without expecting to pay for it. “People seem willing to give us their programming but SABC seems to own everything,” says Thorne. “So we’re in negotiations with the public broadcaster.” CTT is also partnering with Mindset, a non-profit South African organisation that creates African-oriented educational programming.

Thorne adds that they’ve put out a call for programming proposals “on the understanding that if the idea was approved, we would give the producers a letter of intent to broadcast and they would go out and raise their own funds.

“People have sent us brilliant proposals, because everyone’s got that great proposal that wasn’t picked up by one of the other broadcasters. We’ve already approved 10, with about half of those already in production.

Their news service and weekly events’ round-up will be produced in-house by freelance filmmakers and volunteers. Thorne says, “An amazing number of people have volunteered. We’ve just recruited 30 production people for studio crew and in-house programming. One hundred and seventy people applied for presenting; we’re only selecting 20 of them.”

In terms of international programming, CTT has already signed an agreement with Al Jazeera, which allows them access to all of the Arabic media network’s programming. “It’s a huge coup, especially since they give a fresher perspective on international news than, say, CNN,” says Thorne.

CTT was conceived in 2005, when Thorne was co-director of the Arts and Media Access Centre. Partnering with four other NGOs — Bush Radio, Community Video Education Trust, Public Eye and Workers World Media Productions — they undertook research into community television, looking at lessons from community radio and models for sustainability. “The one thing that unites these models is that they’re all local,” she says. “they’re city or town based; they encourage community access and participation.”

Their next step was to embark on a community consultation drive. “We’re committed to the idea of public access, so it’s been very important that the community owns and controls the station. We spoke to a lot of non-profit organisations to get them on board. We focused on six sectors — media; heritage and arts; sports; educational; labour; health and NGOs. We specifically left out the private sector, religious organisations and government, to avoid being co-opted.” This culminated in the first AGM in September 2006, attended by more than 100 non-profit organisations and about 200 people in total. The result was the appointment of the first board of what would become CTT.

Their licence only runs for 12 months and ends in July next year. “Community TV is an untested model. Expectation out there is huge. People are expecting a slick, commercial operation with all the bells and whistles. A lot of people have said we’ll fail and won’t be able to sustain it but I’m very confident,” says Thorne.

For more information, visit www.capetowntv.org

Kevin Kriedermann is the editor of The Callsheet magazine