/ 31 August 2009

SABC’s turnaround strategy gets bad reception

The SABC’s financial woes threaten to sink many small black economic empowerment (BEE) TV production companies.

Kaizer Kganyago, the broadcaster’s spokesperson, said that in 1994 the South African television industry comprised ‘a meagre 20 white-owned production companies”.

The SABC has grown this to 400 BEE-compliant companies, he said. Now the fear is that this hard-won progress will be erased at a stroke.

The SABC projects a R784-million deficit for 2009. The corporation’s turnaround strategy reportedly involves cutting spending on local productions by up to R500-million in the next year.

The Television Industry Emergency Coalition has described this move as the industry’s biggest challenge yet.

According to a press release circulated by the coalition, the SABC’s proposal involves delaying the 2008 Request for Proposals (RFPs) for programmes to be aired, freezing of the 2009 RFPs and the deferring of recommissions and cancellation of some productions.

Rehad Desai, chief executive of Uhuru Productions, said that if the SABC proceeds with its proposed strategy, ‘companies like mine will go down because 50% to 60% of their income is dependent on the SABC”.

The SABC is responsible for about 70% of all TV spend in the country, Desai said. Asked about the potential effects of the broadcaster’s plans, Kganyago said: ‘Though we are sympathetic, the problem is that those companies have got themselves in a situation where their only income is the SABC.”

Kate Skinner of Save-Our-SABC said the broadcaster ‘has a responsibility to the independent producers”. She said that the SABC ‘needs to continue supporting those companies”.

According to Desai, the small and medium independent film and TV production houses employ up to 80 000 people and account for up to 2% of GDP.

The film and television sector is earmarked to have potential for growth. As a result, Desai said, the emergency coalition is ‘proposing that government find the needed money”.

Emphasising that ‘it is money that is available at the stroke of a pen”, he suggested that it can be sourced from the stimulus package for industries in distress or from the National Lottery.

The lottery, he said, ‘has consistently returned unspent money annually for arts and culture”. Skinner said: ‘It would be even harder and more expensive to rebuild the industry if it is allowed to collapse.”

Kganyago cautioned that if the SABC yielded to the coalition’s demands, it would be told that if it knew there was no money, it should not have procured more productions.