by Thinus Ferreira
On Thursday night the South African public broadcaster suddenly announced that it is "officially" launching its 24-hour SABC Sport channel at an amateur-looking launch event at its Auckland Park headquarters where a scattering of socially-distanced guests sat on wooden benches and astro turf.
Thursday night's "official" launch comes after SABC Sport had already been broadcasting "unofficially" for a while on eMedia Investments' Openview satellite TV platform and the SABC's digital terrestrial television (DTT) offering.
SABC Sport launched on 15 April 2021. On Thursday afternoon at 14:30 the SABC suddenly said in a belated statement that the public broadcaster would be "hosting a live broadcast of the official launch of its sports channel" at 19:00 on Thursday.
With little warning to media about it except for a few selected "outlets" as SABC chairman Bongumusa Makhathini referred to them, the SABC on Thursday night held an in-person "launch event" that it didn't bother to tell the majority of media about - similar to when it launched its latest version of the SABC News channel.
Neither the SABC's corporate affairs division under Gugu Ntuli, nor SABC Sport, afterwards issued any press release, press pack, basic channel logo, scheduling or anchor information, or any press release about what was said at the "official" launch event of the SABC Sport channel that a lot of media by Friday afternoon simply ignored.
At the SABC's hagiographic SABC Sport official launch event on Thursday night some socially-distanced attendees sat on wooden benches on green astro turf and were served snacks by wandering waiters while presenters Vaylen Kirtley, Thomas Mlambo and Owen Hannie spoke from a stage.
SABC Sport has been available already on the SABC's DTT service, through e.tv's Openview decoder on channel 124, as well as on Telkom's TelkomONE video streaming service.
SABC Sport is notably absent from MultiChoice's DStv and from StarTimes' StarSat satellite pay-TV services, with the SABC that wants to create and build its own televised sports channel brand similar to MultiChoice's long-running SuperSport brand.
Thursday night's "official" announcement tele-launch also included the announcement of the second team squad for the controversial Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games that is forging ahead despite intense criticism given the global Covid-19 pandemic and the rampant ongoing spread of the virus in Japan.
Other upcoming content on the SABC Sport channel besides the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games would feature friendly matches of South Africa's football team Bafana Bafana, as well as Premier Soccer League (PSL) games, the Confederation Cup, the Carling Black Label Cup, Formula E, the French Top 14, and also boxing matches and South African cricket, athletics and tennis.
"With the analogue switch-off planned for April 2022, the SABC believes that free sports content could be a significant driver in the final push for digital migration to DTT and satellite," Bongumusa Makhathini said.
"SABC Sport is a centre-piece in the SABC turn-around and renewal," he said.
Gary Rathbone, SABC Sport general manager, said that "Since the channel became operational in April this year, its audience figures have been positive, with latest TAMS figure showing a total reach of over 2 million, a 5% share of the national television market".
"On Openview alone, the channel has established itself amongst the top 10 on the bouquet, with a total reach of over 1.4 million, representing a 24% share of the Openview market. This is really positive start for an exciting new Sport channel that South Africans will be able to access without needing to pay a subscription."
Gary Rathbone said that SABC Sport will try to have broad sports content in order to speak to as many sports fans as possible.
"There also needs to be a mix between international content and local content," he said. He said SABC Sport is working on broadcasting "kasi-sports, school sports, women sports".
About the ongoing and latest fight with MultiChoice and SuperSport around the sub-licensing of sports content, for instance the SABC that said it won't show the upcoming Springboks and Lions rugby tour, Gary Rathbone told Vaylen Kirtley that "more should be done to help facilitate that access to that content on our platforms".
"We're not looking to try and acquire it in some sort of way and undervalue it in terms of the people that do put the money in, the hard-earned money, but there is ways and means to make it shareable, to make it accessible, to make it equitable in a way that helps us to grow out brand, helps us to commercialise the business that we're in and go out and buy better content and make better programmes."
A fawning Thomas Mlambo "interviewed" Stella Ndabeni-Abrahams, South Africa's minister of communications and digital technologies who bloomed under the studio lights as a wannabe TV presenter.
There was no semblance from Thomas Mlambo of even trying to ask kind of pertinent questions to Stella Ndabeni-Abrahams about the delay with DTT and the damage it's causing to the broadcaster, the SABC's struggle with sports rights and ongoing lack of government funding to pay for it, or her department's failures in helping the broadcaster with solving sport content issues.
