The new operating model of the SABC erroneously and deliberately continues to place a too heavy emphasis on news as the core business of the South African public broadcaster instead of on excellent public programming, says one of the three biggest SABC trade unions, Mwasa.
In a strongly worded letter Mwasa says the SABC should ''rebuild its production teams and rather compete with other producers by making innovative quality programmes'' since the SABC ''can't afford to be a programme commissioning vending-machine, less even to be a video playing machine for any junk sold to it by any seller''.
Mwasa is lashing out at the broadcaster's executive management, saying that ''no feasibility study was done on the viability of the roll-out of a new 24 hour news channel'' by the SABC. ''Resources needed to compete with the likes of the BBC, Reuters, FPA, CNN and other well established well-resourced broadcasters are simply not abundant in our case of the SABC. We are unable to cover the breadth and with of our own country yet we want to beat heavyweights on an international stage,'' says Mwasa.
''The core business of the SABC is broadcasting programmes of various genres including news, education, religion and children. We need to reverse the personality-cult driven machinations that news is king,'' says Mwasa, asking for ''a discussion on the quality and value of the products the SABC broadcasts. As we speak, a handful of individuals decide what South Africans want to watch and hear. This must change.''
Mwasa says the SABC's production capacity ''has been deliberately emaciated and annihilated'' to the extent that ''Henley [Studios] and RBF stand empty for days on end whilst the remaining staff stand idling everyday waiting for tapes from outside producers to be delivered or those at FCC wait to link to some outside production studio.''
