"Welcome to the real world."
That is TopTV's response to the SABC after the SABC's new CEO Lulama Mokhobo last week told parliament that the SABC's viewership is declining due to the growth in pay TV in South Africa and pay TV options becoming more affordable for the SABC's target market.
I asked Heather Kennedy, TopTV's vice president for marketing, for reaction and comment on the SABC's statements of last week, during a Q&A session of TopTV's programming press preview held in Cape Town.
"Welcome to the real world," she said, and then more jokingly: "It's called competition".
Heather Kennedy continued to explain the issue on a more serious note and why it's happening, whilst underscoring the importance of public broadcasting.
"It's happening everywhere. The very same thing happened in America. You had the four main broadcast networks and then a proliferation of special interest TV channels and subscription television services. The viewership of traditional broadcasting channels are now way down from where it was in the past and pay TV's climbing. There is an ongoing and huge fragmentation of the viewing market. Same in the United Kingdom. And in the rest of the world. It's part of the progression of viewing markets."
"Free TV plays an important role in providing national news and that kind of broad general interest content. And then pay TV provides an additional alternative and more options and choices to TV viewers - especially with a multi-channel line-up."
"The SABC needs to face the reality. It is what is going to happen," said Heather Kennedy. "When it comes to television, consumers and viewers want more and more choices. When I think of cars in South Africa just a few decades ago, you had Ford or Volkswagen. Now you look at the cars on the road - I mean there's just this huge number of choices and all these different models for every market segment."
"It's about more choices and more options and fulfilling more viewers' needs. In some respects I actually feel in our country we were held back compared to what's been happening internationally for a while. But we're moving very fast now."
Heather Kennedy stressed however that public broadcasting is very important and fulfills a very important role. The public broadcaster's channels are also carried on TopTV's platform.
"The emphasis shouldn't be on that [viewers moving to pay TV]. I feel it's important that pay TV needs to work alongside free TV."
