Millions still at risk of no TV as battle continues against switch-off
PICTURE: Quang Lự Đỗ/Pexels
SABC
Proceedings in the case that seeks to invalidate and halt the switch-off of analogue TV, have continued this week in the Pretoria High Court.
Minister of Communications and Digital Technologies (CDT) Solly Malatsi announced in December 2024 that the deadline for the switch-off had been extended to the end of March 2025
Three applicants – e.tv, Media Monitoring Africa (MMA) and SOS Support Public Broadcasting (SOS) – now argue that the Department of CDT did not sufficiently consult with them in accordance with a 2022 Constitutional Court ruling on the scheduled migration.
Should the switch-off take place, millions will not be able to view TV programmes on their old box TV sets. SOS National Co-ordinator Uyanda Siyotula said ‘the rights of many poor and marginalised people are going to be infringed’.
See ‘South Africa needs its public broadcaster, but who is going to fund it?’, here
The Constitutional Court aspect of the matter refers to a judgment of the court on 28 June 2022 in two consolidated applications for direct appeal against a judgment and order of the Gauteng High Court in Pretoria.
The applications arose from a matter launched in the High Court by e.tv against the Minister of CDT, in which MMA and SOS were admitted as intervening parties, concerning
- the government’s plan to change TV broadcast through analogue transmission to digital broadcasting systems, and
- the eventual date when the analogue systems would be switched off
MMA said the postponement of the switch-off in December had not been surprising, but the fact that ‘only a few set-top boxes (STBs) had been installed since the Constitutional Court order in 2022’ was ‘startling’ as this had been to allow as many South Africans as possible to migrate.
The High Court heard the parties’ legal bid to invalidate and halt the switch-off on the new date announced by the minister, with the applicants charging that, if the decision was not reviewed and set aside, it would still sever millions of South Africans from access to television.
TV sets that currently only receive analogue services, would go blank.
See ‘Millions of households at risk, says #SaveFreeTV campaign’, here
The looming deadline is challenged on numerous grounds, including
- that it will breach a promise made by government
- that the decision was taken without rational consultation, and
- that government is nowhere near completing its process of rolling out STBs to all who need and have been promised them before the switch-off date
MMA Director William Bird has blamed the continuing issues ‘on an ongoing and collective inability to make sure that the poor and indigents actually have access to television’.
In December, he said, ‘What we know is that 28.5 % of South African audiences still rely exclusively on free-to-air services in order to access television, so had they gone ahead with this decision, you would have that entire group of people (4.5m households) cut off from television completely’.
‘That would have been … unacceptable because, of course, these are the poorest of the poor.’
When switch-off occurs, the current allocation of the necessary frequency spectrum for analogue broadcasting of e.tv, the SABC and numerous community broadcasters, will come to an end.
The SABC’s Group CEO Nomsa Chabeli has warned that the transition will cut off [at least] 4m households without access to satellite platforms or STBs, which will severely impact the public broadcaster’s sustainability.
Chabeli said that ‘even though [the SABC] is a public broadcaster, if you look at the public mandate, it is self-funded – it is not funded by government’
‘Therefore, the minute you impact the ability of the SABC to deliver to audiences, and audiences to be available to advertisers – which is where the revenue comes in – it means that, immediately, you are compromising the public mandate.
‘If we look at it in terms of the analysis we have done, we still have about 4.4m households that are not part of any satellite platform … that have not received their STBs.
‘[Thus] it means that if it does go ahead on the 31st of March, we are in a situation where the SABC is about to lose 27% of their audiences and that immediately translates into revenue losses.’
e.tv sought to review and set aside 31 March 2025 as the final analogue switch-off date, to refer the determination of a new date to the Minister of CDT for determination and gazetting.
