Pushing public programming

1 May 2010

Cape Town TVIEC march to the SABC - 4 June 2009 (Picture: Marc Schwinges) Cape Town TVIEC march to the SABC - 4 June 2009 (Picture: Marc Schwinges)

South Africa's local production industry in perilous state

The Coalition believes that South Africa's local production industry has been in a perilous state since 2009. The SABC, as the nation's public service broadcaster, has been the biggest commissioning body in the country. However, due to its financial crisis the SABC defaulted on payments to numbers of independent producers. Further, future commissioning was deferred. This lead to the closure of independent production houses, the lay-off of staff and freelancers, production facilities standing empty etc. - putting the entire industry in jeopardy.

SOS has stated that these trends need to be urgently reversed and that the following needs to be dealt with:

  • Strengthening the public broadcaster;
  • Ensuring the SABC (and other broadcasters) recognise independent producers' intellectual property rights. (At the moment the broadcasters own sole copyright);
  • Addressing the dearth of distribution and exhibition platforms; and
  • Cultivating new audiences

As one way to deal with the crisis, the Department of Communications published in September 2009 its "Local and Digital Content Development Strategy". The Department put forward a number of solutions. However, SOS stated that the Discussion Document did not sufficiently deal with the issues raised above. (See sidebar for SOS submission.)

In terms of some of the latest developments the SABC put out limited programming briefs (June 2010) and promised to put out further briefs in December 2010. The June briefs were less substantial than normal and to date (November 2011) no further briefs have not been tabled. 

A further initiative from the Department of Communications was a Local Content Summit held in mid 2010. However, stakeholders are still waiting for outcomes from the Summit. Also, the previous Minister of Communications, General (ret) Siphiwe Nyanda called for nominations for a Local Content Advisory Committee. Again stakeholders are waiting for an announcement of the final shortlist. We are now two Ministers on!