Solly Malatsi units new deadline for analogue switch-off

Communications minister Solly Malatsi mentioned on Thursday that the deadline for analogue switch-off has been moved out as soon as once more – although this time by solely one other three months.

The broadcasting digital migration mission, which is 14 years past the unique deadline of December 2010 set by former communications minister Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri in President Thabo Mbeki’s administration, has proved an insurmountable activity for a protracted listing of communications ministers, all from the ANC.

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Malatsi – the primary Democratic Alliance politician to steer the ministry, now below the federal government of nationwide unity – mentioned in a press release that he has secured cupboard’s assist for an extension to the deadline for analogue switch-off from 31 December 2024 to 31 March 2025. The December 2024 deadline had been set by his rapid predecessor, the ANC’s Mondli Gungubele, who now serves as deputy minister.

“This extension will be sure that as many indigent households as attainable will get pleasure from their proper to entry broadcast providers,” Malatsi mentioned in Thursday’s assertion.

“We’ve communicated this choice to the broadcasters and related stakeholders … and decide to proceed working along with them on this mission. Their dedication to making sure that the free-to-air households migrate is crucial to the success of this programme,” mentioned Malatsi, who’s clearly eager to keep away from additional litigation from industrial broadcasters that has bedevilled the method previously.

He added that the mission has “dragged on for much too lengthy”, saying broadcasting in each analogue and digital is “expensive and can’t be sustained indefinitely – extra so at a time when the fiscus is below excessive stress”.

Subsidised bins

However he mentioned 467 000 households that registered for presidency set-top bins as a part of a subsidy programme haven’t but acquired them, and this must be addressed. He didn’t say why that they had not but been distributed.

“Our rapid focus between now and the top of March 2025 is to aggressively speed up the supply and set up of set-top bins to indigent households to make sure that as many households as attainable are ready for the switch-off,” Malatsi mentioned.

William Fowl, govt director at Media Monitoring Africa, warned in June that any migration from analogue to digital tv that left a portion of the inhabitants behind would result in an existential disaster for the SABC.

Learn: SABC funding disaster as South Africans spurn TV licences

“It’s a catastrophic danger for the SABC… To chop its viewers on this context is mainly taking away its solely income. This can have penalties on the hundreds of jobs on the SABC, and we face a attainable extinction occasion for the general public broadcaster,” mentioned Fowl.  — (c) 2024 NewsCentral Media

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