by Thinus Ferreira
The South African public broadcaster will soon launch a second SABC News TV channel, similar to the existing English-language one on DStv funded and paid for by MultiChoice, but only available on its own SABC+ streaming service and as a digital terrestrial TV service - with news and current affairs programming in vernacular languages other than English.
After the SABC relaunched its SABC News channel in August 2013 on DStv, it carried the Zulu, Afrikaans, Siswati, Tsonga, Xhosa, isiNdelebe, Sotho and Venda TV news bulletins done for SABC1 and SABC2 throughout the day on the SABC News channel.
Two years later MultiChoice two years later decided to expand the SABC News channel beyond South Africa into the rest of the African continent and the SABC altered the programming on the channel to an English-only format.
The result was that the SABC dropped TV news bulletins in all other languages besides English from SABC News from April 2015. The channel has been English-only for the past seven years with SABC TV news bulletins in South Africa's other official languages only available on SABC1 and SABC2 as once-off broadcasts and made available on YouTube.
Now the SABC is planning on bringing back and expanding these other TV news bulletins in languages other than English on a SABC News spinoff TV channel which will be made available on its SABC+ streaming service, as well as a digital terrestrial television (DTT) channel where it will sit alongside the existing SABC1, SABC2, SABC3 and SABC Sport channels.
The as-yet-unnamed SABC News channel which will run 24 hours per day, similar to the existing SABC News channel and which will be launched soon, will carry TV news bulletins and current affairs programming in indigenous languages, as well as do parliamentary coverage in non-English languages from Cape Town.
Besides complementing the existing SABC News channel, this second SABC News channel will compete with eMedia Investment's eNCA (DStv 403) and Thabile Ngwato and Thokozani Nkosi's Newzroom Afrika (DStv 405) TV news channels.
In November 2022 Newzroom Afrika started hiring field reporters, bulletin editors and executive producers to dramatically expand its vernacular news offering, with plans to start offering TV news bulletins on the channel in Nguni languages like isiZulu and isiXhosa in 2023 - something which eMedia tried before and later scaled back again.
The SABC didn't respond to specific questions in a media query about the SABC News offshoot channel but did confirm to me that the channel will be launching officially soon.
"The channel will be broadcast on DTT and SABC+," Gugu Ntuli, SABC spokesperson said.
"In response to the millions of audiences yearning for longer and more quality
bulletins and current affairs in African languages, the SABC will soon be
launching its 24-hour African news channel to cater to the needs of these loyal
viewers."
She said that the channel "will also include more parliamentary content including
content from its committees. More details regarding the name and exciting offerings will be revealed soon".
It's not yet clear what resources the SABC is allocating to this new channel, whether more staff are being hired and to what degree the new channel it will be run with the existing SABC News newsroom capacity, infrastructure and budget.
The SABC was asked but it is also still unclear if the new channel will be carrying any advertising from its launch, what the number of live programming hours will be, and how the rebroadcast cycle is being structured with news channels using an overnight repeat approach and usually repeating news content during two 8-hour blocks over a 24-hour period.
