by Thinus Ferreira
The South African public broadcaster is pushing ahead to get its broken SABC TV Licence fee system scrapped and for it to be replaced by a compulsory new tax in the form of a so-called "media levy" that will have to be paid by all households and businesses.
The SABC continues to say that pay-TV operators like MultiChoice and China StarTimes, operating as StarSat in South Africa, will have tack on this "media levy" to subscription fees and pay that over to the SABC to help the public broadcaster.
MultiChoice has publicly vowed that it would not do that and compromise its DStv subscriber database.
In 2021 just 21% - only 2.2 million out of the 10.3 million SABC TV Licence holders that the broadcaster is aware of - bothered to still pay their annual TV licence during the 2020/2021 financial year.
The new TV tax for the SABC would no longer be dependent on whether a person or a TV household has a TV set that can receive SABC signals or be device-specific - for example a tablet or a mobile phone - but is simply based on whether a South African has access to SABC content, irrespective of device.
The SABC appeared before parliament's standing committee on public accounts (SCOPA) on Wednesday to brief the committee on the broadcaster's irregular expenditure and finances with SABC chairperson Bongumusa Makhathini who said that the plan is to replace the outdated SABC TV Licence fee system with a public media levy.
He said that the plan is "the replacement of the current TV Licence regime with what we call a public media levy which also has a component where the subscription major players can also assist with the collection of that public media levy".
"That's very important because it's still one of our major streams of revenue at the SABC, the first one of course being commercial activities - sponsorship, advertising and then immediately after that is the SABC TV Licence which we want to change to be a public media levy".
The SABC also wants to change the so-called "must-carry" regulations further that determines carriage of its TV channels on pay-TV services like MultiChoice's DStv and others, with the SABC that wants to make more money from platforms that carries its content.
"We want those regulations changes for the SABC to benefit from its content fully".
"Because of our very high cost structure, signal distribution cost is still one of the major costs faced by the SABC and we are currently in talks with Sentech to have the tariff that Sentech charges reviewed," Bongumusa Makhathini said.
SABC: No further bailouts
When asked by the committee whether the SABC can rule out any further bailouts for the public broadcaster, Bongumusa Makhathini said "I can confirm that there is no possibility of the SABC coming back for a bailout".
"I can assure you that there will be no need for another bailout for the SABC."
Digital migration, audience decline cutting into revenue
"The SABC revenue decline - one of the themes that drive it is the migration from linear to digital platforms," Yolande van Biljon, SABC CFO, told the committee.
"In our new financial year, our focus also shifts to putting measures in place to ensure we generate revenue from the digital platforms."
"There are of course our partnerships with Telkom and eMedia and the likes which also provides us access to their platforms that are additional platforms where we are able to generate revenue from."
Ian Plaatjes, SABC COO, said "the decline in audience has a direct impact on the decline in advertising revenue".
"The decline in audience is multi-causational - the global trend that there is. Not much we can do about that. There is an impact on the analogue switch-off but we are managing that with the department of communications and digital technologies."
SABC video streamer to launch Q3 2022
Ian Plaatjes said that the SABC now plans to launch the public broadcaster's own video streaming service, similar to the BBC's iPlayer, by the third quarter of this year.
The SABC initially said it would launch before the end of its current financial year which ends 31 March 2022.
Ian Plaatjes said a big driver of audience loss for the SABC is audience migration to digital.
"Right now we do not have our own digital platform. We have gone to market and are in the final stages of testing the responses of that and we will have our own over-the-top (OTT) platform in the market by the third quarter of the next financial year."
"What that means is we're going to be launching additional channels within the new financial year but we are also changing the process of acquiring content for our channels - we are optimising that."
"It's a big game-changer. And you will see a lot more compelling content coming through on our existing platforms but also on the new channels that we are going to be launching that will also be available on our OTT platform."
"We will be aggressively playing in the digital space."
He said that the SABC started testing the software on Tuesday this week that would allow the broadcaster to commercialise its own streamer's platform as well as the third-party platforms its using.
"We will be using it as a pilot phase for this month and will go live from next month. So for the first time, we will start off a financial year where we have the ability to monetise our digital platforms as well."
