by Thinus Ferreira
South Africa's public broadcaster will launch a SABC TV Licence loyalty programme, with tiered-rewards, in an attempt to get more TV households to pay their annual TV Licence fee.
According to the SABC's latest financial report of 2021/2022, only 18% of TV households which are on the SABC's books and which the broadcaster is aware of, still bother to pay a SABC TV Licence fee.
Millions more households owning TV sets without any licence and which the SABC is not aware of, are watching MultiChoice's DStv, StarSat, video streamers and other video content without any licence.
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%.
Now the broadcaster wants to start a SABC TV Loyalty programme.
"Why we had a slump in SABC TV Licence collections is that two of the agencies that were collecting on our behalf were underperforming and we had to terminate those agreements and go back to market and bring new ones onboard," Ian Plaatjes, SABC COO, told parliament.
"We'll be implementing a SABC TV Loyalty programme. The timing of this is really divine if you really think in terms of our streaming service SABC+ which wasn't on the cards before. Now we'll have a TV Licence Loyalty programme that we can link into that and so our marketing department is working out campaigns around that."
The SABC wants a TV Licence Loyalty programme that integrates with its existing TV Licence database, offers tier-specific rewards to customers, allows them to earn rewards, and enables the easy spending, transfer and donation of earned rewards.
The loyalty programme must also offer promotions, competitions and surveys.
