The SABC's highest title holder now admits the way the South African public broadcaster bought programming for broadcast is "ridiculous" and says that one person is no longer responsible for deciding what the SABC buys, and then shows, on television.
At a hastily-convened press conference on Friday afternoon at the SABC's headquarters in Auckland Park the SABC chairperson dr Ben Ngubane also admitted that the shocking way in which the SABC acquired programming was part of the cause of the problems at the beleaguered broadcaster.
For years the SABC continued to buy sub-standard and inappropriate international programming and signed terrible package deals forcing the broadcaster to take trash television it simply kept paying for.
Meanwhile SABC executives, some not skilled or versed in international programming acquisition - continued to jet to international buying markets - sometimes flying in luxurious first class - and picking up programming wholly unsuitable for the SABC as executives were wined and dined in exotic locales by sellers.
Besides sitting with bad TV shows, the broadcasting licensing periods of content deals of the SABC also lapsed - the window of time a broadcaster gets to start broadcasting the acquired episodes of a production - after which it forfeits the rights. This happened because of bad scheduling, ineptitude and mismanagement within SABC ranks.
Dr. Ben Ngubane said at Friday's press conference that the SABC had just paid another R416 million back of its government bailout of R1,47 billion through the government guaranteed loan from Nedbank it received in 2009 and that the SABC still owes R230 million.
Dr. Ben Ngubane said that purchase decisions can no longer be decided by one executive alone and that consensus from all executives are required.
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