The TVIEC had a 2 hour meeting with Icasa who is supposed to check and monitor TV channel's local content quotas.
The TVIEC says - especially in light of the SABC's drastic cutback on local content commissions - that Icasa is basically not checking and monitoring the SABC's compliance reports related to local content broadcasting correctly.
''The TVIEC is alarmed at the lack of rigid monitoring of SABC compliance admitted by Icasa in the meeting,'' says the TVIEC.
''Presented with files of evidence about a lack of data accompanying SABC’s local content compliance reports for the past seven years, Icasa admitted that they have not had the requisite methodology in place to fully monitor SABC’s compliance claims.''
The TVIEC says that ''Icasa stated that they are developing a new blueprint that will be able to accurately measure SABC’s compliance instead of just being reliant on SABC’s summaries and occasional spot checks.''
''While the TVIEC believes that Icasa intends to beef up its monitoring, the regulator was unable to explain why other broadcasters have in the past provided data to support their compliance summaries but the SABC never has.''
