The minister of communications, Roy Padayachie, is looking at establishing a broadcasting panel of experts to help with creating a new broadcasting policy for South Africa.
In November last year, the minister of communications withdrew the highly controversial Draft Public Service Broadcasting Bill that looked to overhaul the entire South African broadcasting landscape.
With the bealeaguered South African public broadcaster in upheaval, the community television and radio industry struggling, the massive complexity and challenges of the advent of digital terrestrial television (DTT) in South Africa, new and growing commercial TV and radio competition, and a myriad of public broadcasting issues that simply didn't keep up with the times, the department of communications is now planning to start a brand-new and comprehensive public broadcasting review to change broadcasting legislation in South Africa.
The department is promising a new, comprehensive White Paper looking at South Africa's broadcasting sector as a whole, including the public, community and commercial sectors which the department wants to complete by 2013. To this effect, the minister wants to establish a broadcasting panel with international and local experts to help.
''The SOS Support Public Broadcasting Coalition believes that this process is both urgent and important given the deep-seated problems across the broadcasting and communications sectors both at the level of the public broadcaster and the community media sector,'' says Kate Skinner, co-ordinator of the SOS Support Public Broadcasting Coalition, the public pressure group representing a broad array of interest groups including academics, trade unions, institutes and organisations and federations within the South African broadcasting industry.
The SOS says its important that new legislation focus on ''ensuring a sustainable and stable public broadcaster and community media broadcasters in our rapidly changing broadcasting landscape''.
