The SABC is making radical and shocking suggestions about how it wants to raise revenue from SABC TV Licence fees - including a price hike, the credit blacklisting of bad payers, and a big increase in fines for no licence and late licence renewal.
The SABC also wants the broadening of the "TV set" definition to include more devices, retailers to be forced to ask for a valid licence before they're allowed to sell a DStv or Openview decoder in their shops, and for pay-TV operators like MultiChoice and StarSat to be forced to see a valid SABC TV licence first before proving a pay-TV service to a subscriber.
Last week on Thursday the beleaguered South African public broadcaster, that the auditor-general called "commercially insolvent", called for a massive overhaul of the SABC TV Licence fee including an increase in the mandatory R265 annual fee.
The SABC has only 1.8 million paying TV households and businesses out of over 9 million accounts on its database. Besides the 7.2 million not paying, South Africa has an overall approximate 14 million TV households, meaning there are another roughly 5 million TV households that don't have any SABC TV licence.
Licence fee hike
In the SABC's 55-page submission on 31 August for the review of South Africa's public broadcasting policy, the SABC says it wants SABC TV Licence fees to be increase.
The SABC says the fee of R265 remained unchanged since 2013 and that South Africans should actually be paying R517.75 by 2018 if the fee increased along with the annual inflation rate since 2002.
"Currently the SABC TV Licence fee amounts to 72c a day. In 2018 this is very little if anything that you can buy for 72c a day," the SABC says in its submission.
Show a licence before you can buy a decoder
The SABC also wants the definition of "television set" to be broadened.
The SABC wants the definition broadened to not just include more devices like set-top boxes, decoders, PVRs and satellite TV dishes, but to also force insurance companies, retailers and pay-TV operators like MultiChoice to ask for proof of a SABC TV Licence before the sale in a shop of a set-top box like e.tv's Openview or of a DStv decoder.
"In order to enforce compliance on the payment of licence fees, additional entities must be required to report on the sale or lease or use of television sets. In particular, the entities should include insurance companies and pay-TV operators," says the SABC.
If approved, it will mean that South Africans will no longer be able to buy something like a StarSat decoder, DStv decoder, or even e.tv's Openview set-top box for its free-to-air satellite TV service without showing a SABC TV licence.
"A definition of television set needs to be agreed that broadens the net to include all receiving devices and apparatus that are capable of receiving television broadcasts over the broadcasting radio frequency spectrum but not so broad as to include all mobile phones, tablets and computing devices," says the SABC.
Stiff dealer and pay-TV operator fine
The SABC also wants SABC TV Licence legislation changed so that "a dealer who sells or alienates TV sets as defined in the regulations to a person who is not in possession of a television licence should be liable to pay a penalty of R3 000 per broadcast-enabling devise sold".
The SABC says "penalties of R3 000 per TV set must be levied on retailers and or pay-TV operators who issue subscriptions services and/or decoders to unlicensed/invalid viewers".
The SABC also wants the legislation to be changed to "retailers found without a valid dealer's licence – penalty of R10 000 per store".
MultiChoice, StarSat must check
The SABC also wants pay-TV operators like StarTimes Media SA, MultiChoice and Deukom to be forced to make sure someone has a SABC TV licence before they're given a DStv or StarSat subscription.
"It is also proposed that subscribers should be in possession of a valid television licence prior to subscription and purchasing or renting a decoder," says the SABC.
Bigger fines for late renewal
The SABC also wants an increase in the late renewal fine for people who don't renewed their SABC TV licence annually when it's due.
The SABC wants "penalties for late renewal of a SABC TV Licence to be increased from 10% to 20% per month, to a maximum of 100% after 5 months. The 100% penalty threshold would thus be reached after 5 months and not after 10 months, as is currently the case".
Bigger fines for no licence
The SABC also wants a 100% increase in the fine payable by people caught without a SABC TV licence, saying "penalties for unlicensed viewers – to be amended from double to four times the
amount of the applicable licence fee".
Credit blacklisting
While the SABC isn't currently allowed to do it, the broadcaster also proposes that "the SABC should be allowed to place 'adverse listings' on non-compliant licence holders' credit profiles".
In the SABC's just released annual financial report 2017/2018 for the year until the end of March, the SABC revealed that it billed R3.378 billion in SABC TV Licences but only got R941 million in revenue from this.
The SABC is owed more than R25 billion in unpaid SABC TV Licence fees of which it already wrote off a staggering R4.5 billion related to over 1 million so-called "invalid" accounts.
