» A breakthrough in broadcasting: a global channel no-one can see?

A breakthrough in broadcasting: a global channel no-one can see?

July 19th, 2007

It is excellent news that the SABC is launching a 24-hour international news channel to bring an African perspective to global coverage. There is only one detail that is being left out: will anyone be able to see it?

President Thabo Mbeki is due next week to launch the new SABC channel, which should be another important step in providing an African view of our own continent and the world. I am all for it.

But the media reports on this development missed a crucial question: how is it being broadcast?

Dr Snuki Zikalala, the head of SABC news, tells me that it is available on Vivid technology. But where can one buy Vivid? How many people have it? Have you ever seen it advertised or available in a shop? The short answer is that Vivid has only a tiny audience and does not offer enough for one to consider buying it at this stage. It is really only a technology to make it available to other potential buyers and carriers across Africa.

Meanwhile, the new channel will be flighted after hours on SABC2, replacing the current Africa channel. It is not clear to me what is the point of a 24-hour rolling news channel only available for six hours a day.

Zikalala says SABC is negotiating with Multichoice for this channel to replace their current Africa channel, and that will make it more widely viewable. But that would only be available from May next year when the current contract expires. (And will Multichoice want a new contract with a broadcaster which has applied for a licence to compete with them?)

So Mbeki is launching â€¦ what? A virtual channel? The first international channel guaranteed to have almost no audience, at least for a while? The least controversial of all SABC channels?

Entry Filed under: Anton Harber, TV

2 Comments Add your own

1. David | July 19th, 2007 at 3:28 pm

What do they mean by “launching” the channel when SABC Africa has been aired for years already? And it already has viewers all over the continent. Small numbers, but it’s a start. But what worries me is the obvious anti-Western slant on SABC Africa.
2. Akhona | July 24th, 2007 at 5:52 pm

Thank you Anton!! I was actually googling Vivid when I came across this blog. It seems I am unlikely to watch SABC Africa. It is a sad day when the President launches something not even a tiny bit of his voters are likely to ever.

Some HTML allowed:
<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>

Trackback this post | Subscribe to the comments via RSS Feed

Anton Harber: Media

Professor Anton Harber directs the Journalism and Media Studies Programme at Wits University. He is former editor of the Mail & Guardian.
Full bio

Daily newspaper sales, South Africa
(Ave sales Jul-Dec)
1960 - 681 053 (Population 17,3m)
1970 - 723 566 (22m)
1980 - 803 229 (27,5m)
1990 - 1 214 396 (35,2m)
2000 - 1 117 886 (44m)
2006 - 1 600 000 (47,3m)
2011 - 1 310 000 (49m)

(Sources: ABC and nationmaster.com)

“It was pure political theatre. The excited room was filled with government officials, government consultants, quasi-government agencies, politicians and pupils from government schools. As if on cue, the room rang with applause as one education victory after another was claimed. This was, after all, the annual drama in which the minister of basic education appears on stage to announce the Grade 12 National Senior Certificate (NSC) results …” - Educationist Jonathan Jansen, one of the few with the credibility to look critically at this “celebratory orgy of mediocrity”.

“The (Incwala) ceremony is cloaked in secrecy and marks the (Swaziland) king’s return to public life after a period of withdrawal and spiritual contemplation. Among its highlights is a symbolic demonstration by the king of his power and dominance in a process involving his penetration of a black bull … But last year’s selected bull, according to a recent account from a whistle-blowing Incwala initiate, objected strongly, and threw off Africa’s last absolute monarch.” - Some surprises in this (un-bylined) account of Swaziland politics in Southern African Report

“When the Great Zucchini arrived that Saturday morning, Don had no idea who he was. Frankly, he didn’t look like a great anything. He looked like a house painter, Don thought, with some justification. He wears no costume. He was in painter’s pants, a coffee-stained shirt and a two-day growth of beard. He toted his beat-up props in beat-up steamer trunks, with ripped faux leather and broken hinges hanging askew.” - A classic of magazine profiling, by Gene Weingarten of the Washington Post.

Diepsloot (Jonathan Ball, 2011)

Diesploot: Of Frogs and Fractals, a public lecture at the University of Johannesburg, 4 August 2011

Troublemakers - The Best of South Africa’s Investigative Journalism (Jacana, 2101), edited by Anton Harber and Margaret Renn

Introduction - The Troublemakers: An account of the rise of a new wave of investigative journalism in South Africa.

What is Left Unsaid: Reporting the South African HIV Epidemic, edited by Kristin Palitza, Natalie Ridgard, Helen Struthers and Anton Harber (Fanele, 2010)