South Africa’s Multichoice is declining to add local licence fees that residents have to pay for viewing SABC transmissions. The nation has a habit of not paying such fees and the government wanted Multichoice to add the costs to their monthly/annual subscriber amounts. Currently some 24 per cent of South Africans pay the obligatory fee, […]
South Africa’s SABC public broadcaster is using public service announcements on its channels that its analogue broadcast are coming to an end and being replaced by digital TV signals. Scrolling messages are being shown on all of the SABC channels. The text reads: “Important notice: If you see this message, go to your nearest Post […]
Electric SUV racing series, Extreme E, has announced that South Africa’s SABC (South African Broadcasting Corporation) will televise all five of this year’s X Prix live on its linear channels, SABC1, SABC2, SABC3 and SABC Sport Channel – which began with the debut X Prix which took place in the deserts of Saudi Arabia last […]
Years of losses have forced a major restructuring on financially troubled South Africa Broadcasting (SABC). The broadcaster says that it has now laid off 621 staff, some 21 per cent of its workforce in order to make SABC “fit for purpose” and to avoid the need for more public handouts. “The reduction of employee costs […]
South Africa’s public broadcaster SABC has struck a carriage deal with commercial operator eMedia which operates the Openview free-to-air satellite service. The agreement will see SABC supply six TV channels to Openview. The channels include its mainstream SABC 1, 2 and 3 transmissions as well as three new channels. One of the new channels will […]
South Africa’s public broadcaster, SABC, wants the government to create a “household tax” on every home to fund its activities. “The current TV licence fee system should be scrapped and replaced with a device-independent, tech-neutral household levy for public broadcasting, which would levy all households, with exemption for the indigent and discounts for pensioners,” said […]
South Africa is some ten years late in completing its digital switchover (DSO) from analogue TV. Now it seems the conversion will take even longer. Local reports say that the nation’s president, Cyril Ramaphosa, and the country’s communications Minister, Stella Ndabeni-Abrahams, have now agreed to a new target date of March 2023 to wrap up […]
Financially stretched South Africa Broadcasting (SABC) has cancelled plans to reduce its significantly over-staffed payroll by 400 jobs. A decision has been postponed until 2021, although extra pressures from government and unions might postpone any lay-offs indefinitely. “The SABC board has extended the suspension of the section 189 process to the end of December 2020 […]
South Africa’s public broadcaster SABC is to cut 400 jobs in its latest attempt to curb expenses. While the 400 lost jobs will worry the broadcaster’s powerful unions, it is less than the 600 talked about earlier this year. Additionally, another 97 jobs will be outsourced. An SABC statement said: “The SABC is fully cognisant […]
South Africa’s public broadcaster, SABC, is going ahead with plans to stream content to citizens. On October 30th it issued a partial ‘Request for Information’ (RFI) to some key potential suppliers for the sort of technical support that would be needed ahead of a launch of an OTT service to rival Netflix and Showmax. SABC […]