The Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA) plans to implement a new Broadcast Monitoring System (BMS) which will record all South African broadcasters’ daily activities from 5am to 11pm. This will determine whether broadcasters are complying with their mandates in terms of local content quotas, genres, the number of permissible repeat programmes, etc.
ICASA hopes to acquire the system by mid 2010 and have it operational before year end.
The Authority has been criticised in the past for its alleged lax monitoring of local broadcasters, most notably public service broadcaster SABC.
