South Africans in danger of losing access to SABC

If South Africa follows through with the 31 March analogue switch-off deadline, a date being challenged in court today, the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) risks losing a quarter of its viewership at the end of the month.

This is according to SABC CEO Nomsa Chabeli, who says that this would mean losing out on much-needed revenue as the state broadcaster continues to struggle financially.

"There are 4.4 million households that are not part of any satellite platform that have not received their set-top boxes," Chabeli said.

"If the switch-off does go ahead on 31 March, we are in a situation where the SABC will lose 27% of its audience, which immediately translates into revenue losses."

The deadline for the country's broadcasters to stop using analogue broadcasting frequencies is being challenged in the Gauteng High Court today after eMedia launched legal action to block the switch-off.

eMedia was joined by Media Monitoring Africa (MMA) and the SOS Coalition in its application to the High Court, which is being treated as urgent.

Analogue broadcasts use much more radio frequency spectrum than digital signals, while digital broadcasts also support higher-quality video and audio.

By transitioning to digital, additional spectrum would become available to increase the capacity of wireless telecom networks, including cellular operators, enabling them to offer better mobile data prices.

While the SABC has called for the analogue switch-off to be postponed until the end of 2025, eMedia has argued that the extension needs to last longer.

E-tv executive director Antonio Lee warned that if government proceeded with the switch-off, it could impact 13.9 million people who access television exclusively through analogue broadcasting.

Of these, Lee said around 12 million people cannot afford satellite or other digital forms of television broadcasting.

"This is about an ongoing and collective inability to make sure that the poor and indigent have access to television," MMA director William Bird said.

"What we know is that 28.5% of South African audiences still rely on free-to-air services to access television. So, had they gone ahead with this decision, you would have had 4.5 million households cut off from TV entirely.

The government is rolling out set-top boxes (STB) to solve the problem of transitioning to digital broadcast signals while still accommodating those who cannot afford to access digital TV.

These decoder-like STBs receive digital television signals and convert them into a format that older TVs can display.

However, Lee says that half a million households have not received these STBs.

"Government cannot even roll out to those who have registered to receive set-top boxes," Lee said.

"Crucially, as things stand, around 450,000 households — over 1.5 million — people have registered for but not received STBs."

The Department of Communications and Digital Technologies told Parliament that many of those still awaiting STBs had incomplete addresses and had changed phone numbers, requiring that they be tracked down again.

However, there doesn't seem to be a consensus on the number of households still watching analogue TV.

Perhaps the most authoritative body on this issue is the Broadcasting Research Council of South Africa, which estimated the number of households watching linear TV stood at 13.9 million by the end of 2023.

There are methods for estimating how many of these households still use analogue TV.

By March 2024, MultiChoice had 7.61 million subscribers, and eMedia's Openview had activated 3.43 million of its decoders.

Over 1 million more indigent households have had their STBs installed.

That means about 12 million of the 13.9 million households had access to either digital or satellite broadcasting and would not be left behind in the digital migration.

eMedia has had success in the past when trying to delay the deadline.

It took former communications minister Khumbudzo Ntshavheni to court in 2022 to block an earlier analogue switch-off deadline.

The court ruled that the analogue switch-off must be delayed to accommodate all the indigent households registered for STBs before the deadline.

However, these delays paint an unconvincing picture of South Africa's ability to manage such a project.

The country's journey to ditching analogue in favour of digital broadcasting has been in the works for roughly two decades but has been riddled with delays from the get-go.

In the process, 12 ministers have come and gone and failed to deliver on the critical project.

The table below provides a timeline of the project, with the initial analogue switch-off deadline set for 1 November 2011.