The Television Industry Emergency Coalition (TVIEC) engaged with the SABC Interim Board at a session during last week’s People 2 People conference. Here is a summary of the core issue which were discussed.
- The Interim Board expressed a keen desire to work with the independent television industry and apologised for the SABC’s role in the current crisis.
- However, the board cannot commission new programming right now as this would amount to reckless trading.
- The board’s Plan A was a bail-out. This was refused. Plan B is to request that Treasury underwrite a loan. The board’s plan is to have new funding in place by November 2009 and for commissioning to continue at this stage. They are looking at securing funding for a three year period.
- The board stressed that they intend to deliver on local content mandates and will not request leniency from the regulator.
- The board was alarmed to learn of the collapse of the SABC/TVIEC weekly operations meeting – and therefore the payment plan. They assured us they will intervene in the matter. (The next Ops meeting is set for Friday this week. We understand how frustrating the verification process is for you and we will tackle SABC on the issue on Friday).
