by Thinus Ferreira
At less than a fifth, just 18% of South African TV households the broadcaster happens to be aware of, still bother to pay their annual SABC TV licence - as SABC TV viewership and ratings in prime time continue to tank and have now fallen to below a third of the total audience share as viewers abandon what it's showing.
According to the SABC's latest financial report of 2021/2022, only 18.3% of South African TV households on the broadcaster's database still bothered to pay their R265 annual SABC TV Licence - while the SABC spent even more millions during the financial year trying to get South Africans to pay up.
After billing R4.446 billion in total SABC TV Licence fees during its 2021/2022 financial year, the SABC made only R815 million - meaning that a whopping 81.7% of people who have or once had a SABC TV Licence are simply not paying it, known as the fee evasion rate.
Meanwhile, the SABC spent R73 million rand on SABC TV Licence fee collection, which increased R9 million from R64 million in the previous financial year - meaning that the SABC's collection cost rate climbed further from 8.1% to 8.9%.
The SABC says that the "current depressed economic environment resulted in lower collections than anticipated".
The SABC says in its financial report that it wants to do away with the SABC TV Licence and replace it with a levy which it wants private pay-TV operators like MultiChoice to help collect from DStv subscribers - especially DStv subscribers who have TV sets which the SABC doesn't know about and represent millions of TV households.
The SABC has a "known" SABC TV Licence database of just 10.5 million TV households. In reality, there are many millions more South African households with one or more TV sets - households which the broadcaster is not aware of.
The SABC wants to do away with the SABC TV Licence fees and has submitted proposals for a "technology-neutral, device-independent, public media levy to replace the existing television
licence, exempting the indigent", which it wants MultiChoice to help collect as the dominant pay-TV service in South Africa, on the public broadcaster's behalf.
SABC's prime time viewership problem
While the vast majority of South African TV households no longer care to pay a SABC TV Licence, the SABC's dwindling audience in prime time television has fallen further - plunging to below a third of total viewership share.
Just 31% of South African viewers still bothered to watch something on the SABC's TV channels during the 2021/2022 financial year, down further from 35.8% in the previous year.
It means that two-thirds of viewers now actively avoid, don't want to watch, or can't watch anything on the SABC's SABC1, SABC2 or SABC3 television channels.
The SABC failed in its performance period share targets for each of its TV channels during the financial year, with SABC1 (target: 27%) reaching only 15.47%, SABC2 (target: 12%) reaching only 5.23% due to competition from kykNET (DStv 144) and e.tv, and SABC3 (target: 5%) only managing a paltry 2.11%.
The SABC blames a "combination of a lack of key local properties in key slots, poor marketing, and staff shortages affected performance during the year" and that "aggressive competitors and poor marketing explain the performance achieved".
For SABC3 "the loss of key local properties without timeous replacements and the re-launch of the channel during Covid-19 adversely impacted the performance of the channel".
SABC3 underdelivered on its target for local content in prime time, while SABC1 continued to repeat YO.TV and as a result the channel underdelivered on local children's quotas.SABC2 repeated children's content and licensed some fresh content, which led to the under-delivery on children's content as well.
The second local drama series for SABC3 was delayed and will only be delivered to the channel at the end of 2022, with SABC3 that is licensing local content from other suppliers to try and help reduce the non-delivery gap.
As a a result, the SABC made less money from advertising since it had fewer viewers. "Advertising revenue declined by 8% due to the decline in audience share," the broadcaster says.
The SABC's audience share performance problems are due to the "reduced amount of fresh content during the day, as well as less-competitive titles over the weekend that are limited by provided budgets as well as available revenue".