by Thinus Ferreira
After limping along for a year and a half without someone in charge SABC3 once again has a permanent boss with Pat van Heerden who has taken up the challenge of being channel head of the South African public broadcaster's struggling commercial TV channel.
Patricia van Heerden, known in the biz as Pat, is now running SABC3 since the beginning of 2020. David Makubyane was acting SABC3 channel head for a year and a half following the departure of Aisha Mohamed in July 2018.
Pat van Heerden has taken up the reigns as SABC3 channel boss, coming from Media24 where she was the head of content and scheduling for the Afrikaans lifestyle channel VIA (DStv 147) since 2015.
She's also held various positions including co-producer of An Act of Defiance - The Bram Fischer Story; owner, producer and director at Public Nature Media) and co-chairperson of the South African Screen Federation (SASFED).
Pat van Heerden is no stranger to the media industry and before she joined the SABC as a factual commissioning editor for SABC1 in 2001, she directed the opening film for the Apartheid Museum, a PBS documentary called A Woman’s Place and other documentaries.
At the SABC she previously also served as the head of entertainment between 2004 to 2009, and was the head of content and an executive producer at Connect TV creating TV formats like My Perfect Wedding and other shows for M-Net's Mzansi Magic (DStv 161) channel.
Pat van Heerden also worked for the Al Jazeera TV news channel in the Middle East as head of editorial and senior producer of one of its weekly current affairs programmes.
She has a Master of Philosophy (Public History), Master of Arts (History and Documentary Film) from New York University, Bachelor of Arts, Honours (International History), Higher Diploma in Education (English, History, Film, Phys Ed), Certificate in Drama Script Editing and a Bachelor of Social Sciences (English Literature, Industrial Sociology, History).
"I am delighted that SABC has given me the support and opportunity to take up this challenge in this highly volatile media landscape," says Pat van Heerden. "I'm determined to serve the citizens, the film and television industry and the SABC – the task will require us all working together."
Massive task
Patricia van Heerden faces a gargantuan task in trying to turn around the severely-crippled SABC3 as the public broadcaster's only commercial TV channel that has seen its fortunes, brand and ratings slide the past decade after once being a money-making TV jewel in the SABC crown.
SABC3 has been in a ratings, image and content slide for over a decade which saw the channel go from a reputation for quality shows and a sought-after brand under advertisers with appointment television, to facing severe programming and content, financial and management problems.
The past few years have seen SABC3 suffer major programming, content and scheduling problems, the non-delivery of scheduled programming and abrupt last-minute changes, dated on-air content and the loss of experienced personnel from on-air managers to schedulers.
Lackluster programming and a string of cancellations have left the SABC3 scheduling line-up threadbare with the channel no longer able to afford to keep costly and ratings-challenged shows like Days of Our Lives, The Bold and the Beautiful, Days of Our Lives, 3Talk or its replacement Real Talk, Top Billing or even its iconic and longrunning local soap Isidingo on the air.
SABC3 ratings have stagnated between 900 000 and a million viewers per month for its most-watched shows with the channel struggling to attract eyeballs or producers who are wary of doing shows that might abruptly be cancelled after the premature termination of High Rollers in November 2016 despite a contract.
While SABC3 advertising and sponsorship income is supposed to subsidise the SABC's public mandate SABC1 and SABC2 channels, the reversal in fortune over past years has seen the opposite happen where those channels have to make money to cross-subsidise SABC3.
While persistent rumours inside parliament and the South African TV industry continue about the possibility of the SABC selling off and effectively "privatising" SABC3, the public broadcaster has denied that SABC3 is a "non-core" asset, saying SABC3 will not be put up for sale.
In her new role Pat van Heerden will have to try and rejuvenate and inject new life into the schedule and content of the damaged SABC3 brand which has fallen behind with the aggressive growth in satellite pay-TV and free-to-air satellite TV like DStv and Openview, as well as video-on-demand (VOD) streaming services, and even YouTube in South Africa.
All of these have steadily been siphoning away the high-income and highly desirable audience that used to be SABC3's target market with the channel that has been mired in an identity and brand crisis, unsure of how to transform content-wise, how to effectively compete to win back viewers and ratings or with what type of content offering.
