Friday, November 19, 2010

BREAKING. Why Tuesday's important appearance of the SABC board before parliament will AGAIN not be televised.


You're reading it here first.

I can exclusively break the news that nobody's realized yet or bothered about: that the SABC board's upcoming (new?/final?/finally?) third time rescheduled appearance before parliament will not be televised and that it will basically happen in camera as far as TV viewers are concerned who will not be able to watch and follow the proceedings.

So far the SABC board (what remains of it after four members resigned) has not had a single change to speak in front of parliament's portfolio committee on communications. A first in camera meeting in parliament was halted by an urgent court interdict where only the lame-duck SABC board chairperson dr Ben Ngubane got to utter a victim-like speech. He blamed everyone else for the SABC's top management failure besides himself, except of course the computer (''Computer says no.''). During a second open meeting where the SABC's acting group CEO Robin Nicholson memorised some big words and showed crazy charts worthy for entry in a kindergarden paint-by-numbers competition, the meeting was canceled and the SABC board told to go and prepare better documents.

Which bring us to next week's upcoming third meeting (originally scheduled for November 16, then pushed to this Tuesday, November 23) where hopefully, finally, the South African public will get to hear the SABC board speak. But just not live. I can exclusively report that the proceedings will at this stage NOT be televised by the Parliamentary Service (DStv 408). Insiders at the channel tells me the Parliamentary Service would love to broadcast the proceedings but that ''it looks doubtful''. Here's why.

All the camera equipped venues have already been booked! And get this: I'm told by several independent, very reliable sources I've spoken to, that the communications committee hasn't at this very late stage even yet confirmed a venue for Tuesday's meeting - although the meeting itself is confirmed for Tuesday, and has a starting time of 09:00. That leaves only two days, today (Friday) and next week Monday for the committee to wake up and find a camera-enabled venue, change it, let everyone know and give the Parliamentary Service the opportunity to adapt and broadcast the proceedings. A Parliamentary Service channel source also confirms to me that no venue has been booked yet. The source added this when I asked: ''The other venues that have camera coverage are already booked for other committees on that day but perhaps things will change between now and then.''

''I can assure you that we will broadcast the SABC board's meeting and appearance before the portfolio committee if they manage to move one of the other committees so that the SABC board appearance can be held in a venue with camera coverage - that is the best [the Parliamentary Service] can do at this point,'' I'm told.