Consultants in South Africa’s broadcasting sector are calling on authorities to confess its failures and reduce its losses relating to the botched migration to digital terrestrial tv (DTT).
Initiated twenty years in the past, DTT was meant to function the first broadcasting medium for free-to-air tv providers, together with these of the SABC and e.television in addition to native and regional neighborhood TV stations. MultiChoice Group additionally had plans to launch GOtv, its subscription terrestrial providing that’s affords elsewhere in Africa, in South Africa.
The concept was to shift South African broadcasters away from older analogue expertise to digital transmissions, that are cheaper to function and make extra environment friendly use of scarce radio frequency spectrum, permitting broadcasters to supply extra channels at greater definition.
The transfer would additionally unlock useful “digital dividend” spectrum that cell operators may then use to supply broadband providers, a milestone achieved in August 2023 when broadcasters moved their alerts to frequencies beneath 694MHz.
However with the deadline for broadcasters to change off their analogue transmissions lower than a month away, some 4.5 million South Africans are prone to being reduce off from entry to tv as a result of they don’t have the set-top bins required to decode digital alerts.
“One of many issues standing in the best way of an answer is the acceptance and realisation that the DTT challenge has failed. There in all probability are many a whole bunch or hundreds of properties who do have DTT, however no audited numbers of precise lively households with DTT bins exist,” stated Michael Markovitz, director of the Gibs Media Management Assume Tank. “Perhaps the answer for presidency is to overlook about DTT and transfer everybody over to satellite tv for pc.”
Set-top bins
One of many main points hampering the migration to digital broadcasts in South Africa is authorities’s failure to distribute set-top bins to qualifying “indigent” households. TechCentral in January reported that state-owned sign distributor Sentech, tasked with the set up of those set-top bins, needed to distribute 220 000 bins to qualifying households throughout the nation earlier than the 31 March deadline.
Round 467 000 households initially registered for the subsidy programme. Installers engaged on the challenge informed TechCentral there was “no approach” the challenge would meet the 31 March deadline set by communications minister Solly Malatsi and full the second half of labor whose first half took greater than a decade to do. One of many installers stated the “state of affairs on the bottom is a large number” and allegations of corruption, maladministration and common incompetence are stated to have undermined the challenge’s success.
Learn: E.television drags Solly Malatsi to courtroom over March digital TV deadline
However even when the lower than 500 000 set-top bins meant for indigent households had been efficiently distributed to them, there’s nonetheless an estimated shortfall of some 4 million households that may nonetheless endure from being reduce off from analogue broadcasts.
Karen Thorne, station supervisor at neighborhood broadcaster Cape City TV, described these households because the “lacking center”. These are properties that don’t essentially match authorities’s definition of “indigent” but in addition can’t afford to purchase a sensible TV or set-top field to entry digital broadcasts.
In keeping with Thorne, DTT can nonetheless be made to work if stakeholders – together with the media, authorities and regulators – come collectively and agree on a sensible approach ahead. She stated one of many main points with authorities’s method is that enter from media stakeholders has largely been ignored, with authorities “options” pressured on the business in a top-down vogue.
“The way forward for DTT must be mentioned; we have to come to a transparent consensus between the broadcasters and regulators. We as broadcasters don’t know what the impression of dropping 40% of our viewers goes to be. We’re already weak as it’s and can’t afford to lose any extra promoting income,” she stated.
The specter of losses in income as a consequence of viewers shrinkage and a subsequent lower in advert spend is a risk confronted by all free-to-air broadcasters, however none extra so than the SABC.
The general public broadcaster faces an existential disaster with its funding mannequin central to a fractious political battle between Malatsi, a Democratic Alliance MP, and his ANC counterparts. The minister withdrew the controversial SABC Invoice from parliament in November, citing points with its funding mannequin his main cause for doing so. Round 80% of the SABC’s revenues come from promoting.
Thorne’s view that DTT can nonetheless be made to work in South Africa represents one faculty of thought. Markovitz’s argument, however, that DTT ought to be changed by satellite tv for pc is sensible for a number of causes.
For one, DTT is now a “sundown expertise”. Whereas it was innovative on the time the challenge was first proposed, expertise has superior so quickly within the intervening twenty years that IPTV and 5G broadcasts have come to the fore, threatening to make DTT redundant.
Secondly, satellite tv for pc offers related advantages to DTT with out a few of its drawbacks. Round 12 million South African households have already got entry to satellite tv for pc. And for the reason that medium doesn’t require any terrestrial sign distribution towers, it’s cheaper for broadcasters, that means their companies are more likely to be extra sustainable.
State subsidy
Nonetheless, transferring 4.5 million households to satellite tv for pc will nonetheless require some sort of state subsidy and administrative course of that might fall prey to the identical snags that crippled the set-top field distribution challenge. However Markovitz argued the income losses to the SABC, e.television and neighborhood radio stations symbolize a fair greater price that authorities should contemplate.
E.television in January filed papers on the excessive courtroom in Pretoria in opposition to Malatsi. The free-to-air broadcaster, together with media watchdogs Media Monitoring Africa and the SOS Coalition, are searching for an pressing interdict to stop the minister from switching off analogue broadcasts on 31 March.
Learn: DTT has failed in South Africa – now scrap it, says eMedia
This isn’t the primary time e.television has taken a communications minister to courtroom on analogue switch-off. The constitutional courtroom in 2022 dominated in favour of e.television and others, discovering that former communications minister Khumbudzo Ntshavheni had did not seek the advice of with business stakeholders together with e.television, Media Monitoring Africa and others earlier than deciding to set a date for switch-off. E.television proprietor eMedia has accused Malatsi of creating the identical mistake as his predecessor.
“We’ve seen 5 of the smaller provinces switched off and that instantly prompted huge viewers losses for the SABC. What extra when the 4 largest provinces are switched off? It’s fairly clear that tens of millions of households can be left behind and we haven’t heard but what occurs to them when their screens present snowy photos on the day of the switch-off,” stated Markovitz. – © 2025 NewsCentral Media
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