South Africa’s long-awaited commercial launch of digital terrestrial television (DTT) will not take place in April this year as previously announced by government, but will only likely happen in the third quarter of 2012, according to recently appointed Minister of Communications Dina Pule.
The Minister presented a progress report of the country’s DTT project as well as her plans for the beleaguered South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) at a press conference in Pretoria in late January, after her third month in office.
At the time of going to print the SABC was once again embroiled in controversy – this time over the appointment of a new chief operating officer (COO), which was criticised as “clumsy and rushed’.
Pule noted that the SABC remains high on her priority list. “South Africa needs a well-functioning SABC which discharges its public broadcasting mandate effectively. In this regard, significant work has been done by the Monitoring Task Team comprising the Department of Communications (DoC), National Treasury and the SABC. The Task Team’s mandate is to ensure that the public broadcaster is able to implement its turnaround strategy and therefore meet the government guarantee conditions,’ explained Pule.
In an interview following the press conference she acknowledged that restoring credibility to the SABC was a daunting task, but said they hoped to start the next financial year with a full house of executives. She also added that big changes were expected at the corporation.
“If we are able to first stabilise the organisation through the appointments of a chief technology officer (CTO), chief operating officer (COO) and chief financial officer (CFO), that will be quite a big step forward,’ said Pule. “Then we need these execs to understand their responsibility and mandate – that they are a public broadcaster and that they have a responsibility to ensure that they do the work the South African public expects them to do, and start building unity and cohesion among themselves.’
“We plan to do a skills audit at the SABC to track where skills are currently utilised and where skills are not utilised, so that every skilled person can be placed properly where they can assist the organisation to stabilise,’ Pule added.
The third part of her plan for the SABC is to ensure that government guarantees are paid back. “The organisation needs to begin to make money in order to sustain itself so that it doesn’t come back to government and say: “please save us’. It must save itself going forward,’ said Pule.
It is also important for the SABC board to understand the governance issues at the corporation and their responsibilities, said Pule. “Once we clear those things, the organisation can steer ahead properly.’
The Minister also noted that they are currently appointing a Broadcasting Review Panel that will conduct a “comprehensive review of the broadcasting policy landscape and make recommendations’. “They will assist us to formulate the Broadcasting Act and also align it to digital broadcasting,’ she added.
Digital migration
Pule noted that her department had been working right through the December holidays to get everything in place for DTT and had made some progress, despite a lack of capacity within the DoC.
Amendments to the 2008 Broadcasting Digital Migration Policy have been finalised and will be gazetted this month, which promises to fast-track the finalisation of the DTT Regulations by ICASA. The Set-Top-Box (STB) Manufacturing Strategy and Scheme for Ownership Support Rollout Framework were also finalised and will be presented to Cabinet in February and ICASA has published DTT Regulations for public comment, which should be finalised by the end of March 2012. Once final regulations are published and the performance period gazetted, broadcasters will be able to apply for new digital channels.
Pule also announced that parastatal signal distributor Sentech was making significant progress in the rollout of DVB-T2 transmitters, and they expect 60% population coverage by March 2012.
In her statement the Minister noted that the DTT education and awareness campaign will be done “in a phased manner until all provinces are covered’. She added later that this campaign would probably commence in April this year.
She explained that the tender for manufacturing STBs should be finalised by mid-February, and they estimate that 23 500 direct and indirect jobs can be created through the STB manufacturing value chain.
“Hopefully in a week or two the South African Bureau of Standards (SABS) will finalise the technical specs and standards of the new STBs,’ she added.
They estimate that five million households will be subsidised by about R400 per STB and will have to pay the difference of about 30%.
According to acting deputy director general at the DOC, Themba Phiri, the box should be as affordable as possible, as government is subsidising it. “You don’t want to experience a situation where the price of the STB inhibits free access to public broadcasting services,’ he noted.
However, he explained that STBs will be sold in a free market system, where more advanced STBs with extra features can be sold at a higher price, but not acquired through the subsidy scheme.
By Linda Loubser
Screen Africa February Magazine 2012 Magazine
