This is what SABC News (DStv 404) showed viewers during the official start of president Jacob Zuma's 2014 State of the Nation Address on Thursday evening in parliament's general assembly: nothing but a black screen.
The SABC's cringe-inducingly bad and embarrassing SABC News 24-hour TV channel suddenly started to suffer constant, ongoing blackouts on Wednesday evening as the official pomp and circumstance of the 2014 State of the Nation Address in parliament got underway.
Following the ongoing technical difficulties which resulted in an interrupted video feed constantly cutting out to a black screen.
SABC News eventually simply went to full-on black screen and no sound.
Then SABC News cut away and showed the SABC News logo.
Then, while the SABC News logo was displayed, audio came back. Then the video came back.
It's not clear how many viewers who might have been tuned to SABC News, decided to rather flip the switch to another TV channel while the SABC and SABC News kept showing a black screen.
The black embarrassing screen was clearly an SABC problem and not with MultiChoice carrying the channel on DStv - the SABC News channel bumper and the word "LIVE" remained on the screen, but with nothing showing - meaning that SABC News was transmitting - just not an actual video feed.
A clip of the cringe-worthy blackout coverage below of how it looked just before SABC News went to an all black screen. Is this what DStv subscribers are paying for? Is this the quality of television that SABC license fee payers are paying for?
ALSO READ: Amateur ANN7 suffers yet another very bad, live, on-air oopsie, this time with reporter Kevin Brandt covering the 2014 opening of parliament.
