After years of planning its 24-hour news channel, and keeping mum about it other than referring to it during presentations made to parliament, South African public broadcaster SABC has announced that the news channel will be broadcast on DStv channel 404.
This is as per a multi-channel agreement with pay-TV operator MultiChoice South Africa, owner of the DStv platform.
According to an SABC statement issued on 5 July, the news channel will be launched by the SABC’s group chief executive officer Lulama Mokhobo on 1 August this year “where more information will be communicated’. (This does not necessarily indicate that the channel will begin broadcasting on 1 August.)
The SABC statement goes on to point out that once digital terrestrial television is finally launched in South Africa, the news channel will also be broadcast on this platform, as well as DStv.
Acting chief operations officer of the SABC, Hlaudi Motsoeneng, is quoted in the statement as saying: “One of the key undertakings of the news channel is that it will provide an opportunity for the SABC to enhance its public service mandate and extend its focus on provincial stories and the different official languages.
“We are very excited about this partnership with MultiChoice as it will expose South African news stories to an audience not only in the country, but outside of South Africa as well. As a public service broadcaster our mandate is to entertain, inform and educate and there is no better vehicle than news and current affairs to deliver on this. We are cognisant of the fact that millions of South Africans rely on the SABC for their news and to be able to extend our reach further, can only be to the benefit of the South African public.’
Multichoice South Africa group CEO Imtiaz Patel stated: “We are delighted to conclude this agreement with the SABC as we believe it will enhance our local content offering on DStv. The news channel in particular will bring diversity to our news programming, as it will provide our audiences with different views and news from an African perspective.’
