The Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa) announced yesterday at 14:30 that "public hearings" will be taking place today at the regulator - the notification to the public in a statement was made less that 16 hours before the public hearing of today was to start.
It's not clear how Icasa want the South African public, TV viewers and the TV industry to attend a public hearing with such short notice which centers around an important issue of new pay-TV broadcasters, diversity in South African public TV broadcasting and competition within South Africa's coming digital terrestrial television setting.
Icasa says the public hearings is part of the process of the regulator to "explore how to best introduce new services and licensees to fascilitate diversity".
Icasa wants to licence new pay TV stations in South Africa "in the short term" and new free-to-air TV channels "in the medium to long term" in South Africa as the country's TV industry moves from analogue broadcasting to digital broadcasting.
Kagiso Media which is interested in launching a pay-TV service in South Africa, the SABC, e.tv, Primedia which is also mulling a possible pay-TV service, MSG Afrika which recently put in a bid to bail-out TopTV but was rejected, the parastatal signal distributor Sentech and the vast public pressure group for public broadcasting, the SOS Coalition, will all be making submissions at today's public hearing at Icasa's head office in Sandton.
