Tuesday, December 22, 2020

Viewers say SABC3 has gone from classy content to a porn hub following Sunday night's broadcast of sexually graphic film.


by Thinus Ferreira

On Monday viewers started lamenting about how the South African public broadcaster's once classy SABC3 has apparently gone trashy and became a "porn hub" following Sunday night's broadcast of a sexually graphic film.

For its last Sunday before Christmas, SABC3 broadcast the R-rated film, The Devil Knows You're Dead.

The SABC3 broadcast on Sunday instantly drew parallels under viewers with when the rival free-to-air commercial broadcaster e.tv used to broadcast the softcore porn film series Emmanuelle during weekends in late-night timeslots.

e.tv eventually ended the scheduling practice after market research indicated that the impact of tawdry content on its brand diminished its ability to lure advertisers during other timeslots.

Unlike Emmanuelle that was slotted close to or after midnight, SABC3 broadcast The Devil Knows You're Dead at 22:30 on Sunday.

The Devil Knows You're Dead, directed by Sidney Lumet and starring Philip Seymour Hoffman, contains strong graphic sexuality, nudity, violence, drug use and language, including blasphemy with South Africa's Film and Publication Board (FPB) that gave it a 16VSL age-restriction.

The FPB certificate for the 2007-film notes the "very strong, very frequent, including blasphemy" language, "fairly frequent, strong" nudity and "fairly frequent" sex scenes, as well as "fairly frequent" violence.

The Broadcasting Complains Commission of South Africa (BCCSA) told TVwithThinus that by the end of Monday it had received no written complaints from viewers, although people did complain on social media, while others joked that they will now start watching SABC3 because of the perceived broadcast of pornography.

SABC3, where Pat van Heerden is currently the channel head, in response to a media enquiry, on Tuesday told TVwithThinus that "The Devil Knows You’re Dead is a high art movie with a stellar cast of some of the finest American actors with famous director Lumet which was part of the SABC 3 December schedule for broadcast Sunday, 20 December at 22:30".

"The movie was promoted with a full house warning and placed outside of primetime as per the programme viewer restrictions. Viewers can continue to enjoy our festive viewing and catch this Sunday night’s Death and the Maiden at 21:30," SABC3 said.

The channel didn't respond to a question asking why the SABC decided to buy and schedule the film and how the film fits into SABC3's brand identity.

SABC3 as the South African public broadcaster's only commercial TV channel continues to fight an uphill battle with viewers, ratings, advertisers and brand identity after all started to slip the past decade.

SABC3 cancelled a litany of longrunning signature series and soaps over the past 3 years without getting replaced while the long-overdue switch from analogue to digital broadcasting has seen the viewership of the SABC's smallest TV channel ebb further to just over a million viewers during a good month.

In November SABC3's highest-rated broadcast was an Afcon 2021 qualifier match on 13 November that lured 1.24 million viewers (3.21 AR, 15.4 share).  

"SABC3 no longer has viewers so they made it a tlof tlof channel," said a viewer on Twitter where SABC3 trended for a period of time on Monday.

"Who needs Pornhub when you have SABC3?" asked another. "SABC3 is now a porn channel?" asked Tshegofatso Mphehelo.


"Looks like SABC3 is coming alright," said Nkosinathi Phaka, while Lebogang Shovhote remarked: "It's a pity. Out of all 3 SABC channels, SABC3 always had classy content".
 

Lwazi Msomi lamented: "Isidingo. Ripley's Believe it or Not. Charmed. National Geographic. Top Billing. When SABC3 was still SABC3."
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