SABC can’t have it both ways

TEMPERS have been flared this week at the prospect of the

SABC’S push to get the current TV licence regime amended, allowing it to impose TV licences for a far wider range of TV receivers and levy video-on-demand services like Netflix or satellite broadcasters like Multichoice’s Dstv.

The reason is simple: not enough individuals are paying for their TV licences. But the truth is, much like Eskom’s power supply to many municipalities or Sanral’s loathed e-toll system, this is not a new phenomenon.

There are several reasons for non-payment. The SABC, like so many other SOES, has been appallingly mismanaged and abused as the plaything of the political elite. It has run at a loss and has had to be bailed out by the taxpayer numerous times.

The biggest reason no one pays, though, is that they get away with it.

The SABC is a vital part of our media landscape; it is the biggest single media organisation in terms of staff and reach and fulfils a critical role as public broadcaster in terms of its diversity of language services.

Its problem is twofold: management and perpetual political interference. The TV licence fee was supposed to free the SABC from the commercial pressures that non-public broadcasters face – forcing them to run very lean and highly competitive operations.

Instead, simply because of its own inability to collect the licence fees that every single TV owner must pay – whether they watch the SABC channels or not – it now wants to cast its net wider to tax commercial outlets while still being able to sell advertising space on its channels.

This would create a highly uncompetitive and very uneven playing field in the broadcast media space. The SABC needs to choose whether it is a public broadcaster or a commercial competitor; it cannot be both – that’s simply unfair to everyone else.