BATTLE FOR TV NEWS
The diversity of broadcast news that South Africans will get in the run-up to next year’s elections will be determined behind closed doors by a corporate committee with little news experience. This is the clearest indication of the inordinate power and reach of pay-tv giant Multichoice and the impact it has on our television industry.
If you have confidence in Multichoice content managers to make the right decision and act in the best interests of a country hungry for greater news diversity, remember this same group approved the much-criticised ANN7 channel. And the same group was at the centre of the controversial three-way deal with the SABC and ANN7, in which it seems to have made generous payments to them to secure support on key policy issues.
After these revelations were leaked, Multichoice conducted an internal review. That was never published but it denied corruption while admitting to having made “mistakes”.
As part of a clean-up, Multichoice announced it would not renew ANN7’S contract when it expires in August. It issued a call for applications to fill this slot with a high-quality, 24/7 news channel. That announcement – along with a resurgent SABC and a restless ENCA news channel – is stirring up the television news market.
As many as 60 entities, including most of the existing news groups, have registered interest in the new opportunity. Applications close at the end of this month and Multichoice’s content managers will then choose. It’s a big decision.
After being badly burnt by ANN7’S amateurishness and partisanship, Multichoice says it wants an “independent, unbiased and critical” 24/7 English-language station, managed and operated by a black-owned company.
Multichoice will have no editorial control. It wants it to be “in the style of Al Jazeera, BBC World News, CNN or Sky News” as well as its two existing local channels, ENCA and SABC News.
The channel will be funded by Multichoice and bidders are asked to identify other sources of revenue, presumably from advertising and sponsorship. With newspapers in decline and online news so far unable to pay its way, broadcast news will be crucial. Where newsrooms around the country have been shrinking, the new station will provide the first injection of a chunk of new jobs for some time in an embattled media industry.
Broadcast groups Primedia and Given Mkhari’s MSG Afrika, which owns Power FM and Capricorn FM, as well as Iqbal Survé’s Sekunjalo group, and Tiso Blackstar, owners of the Financial Mail, Business Day and Sunday Times, are among those putting together bids. No government licence is required so cross-ownership rules do not apply, making it an important opportunity for media groups.
In preparation for its own bid to retain the channel, ANN7 is planning a radical rebranding. Its new name will be Afronews and the sister paper, The New Age, will become Afrotimes.
“I want a clean break with the past,” owner Mzwanele Manyi told the Financial Mail. The Gupta family at the centre of the “state capture” allegations gifted the station to Manyi through vendor financing.
“The first thing is that the financing model must change,” he says. “This on its own brings us all sorts of issues, whether real or imagined. I do not want that hanging over me. We will put in place other financing which will sever ties with the previous owners convincingly.”
Though it is hard to imagine who would finance a station whose licence runs out in a few months, Manyi is adamant he will “find a solution”.
“I am joining the crowd and saying: away with ANN7. I am saying let’s do things that will get market approval. Our newspaper is re-joining the Audit Bureau of Circulation.
“In our management, we have removed all Indian nationals, and this place is now run by the locals.”
The Gupta family had brought in a number of Indian media managers to set up the station, many of them allegedly without work permits.
“We are already starting to kill any semblance of editorial bias and are reporting the way we should,” Manyi now says. “We now do all political parties, even the EFF which has banned us. This is not going to be a battleground for any political faction. We are looking forward to bringing responsibility, honesty and respectability into this space.”
Manyi says Afronews will be a totally different company bidding for the licence. “It will be irrational for Multichoice to give the licence to anyone else. They will be putting 500 people out of work and wasting all these facilities. If they are fair, they will see