SABC opposes TV election ads

2008-10-06 11:23

Johannesburg - The SABC will lose up to R91.8m in revenue if it were compelled to flight political party adverts, the Independent Communications Authority of SA (Icasa) heard on Monday.

"The estimated loss of revenue through giving up traditional advertising time, as envisaged in the draft regulations, will be between R58.8m and R91.8m," said Fakir Hassen, the acting general manager of policy and regulatory affairs at the SABC.

Icasa is holding public hearings on draft regulations which provide a framework under which party political broadcasts in the run-up to general elections next year will be covered.

If the regulations are approved, political parties will flight adverts on television for the first time in South Africa.

But Hassen, accompanied by SABC head of news Snuki Zikalala, told Icasa that the impact of compelling the broadcaster to carry party political TV adverts would be "serious".

"It's a lot of money... Eighty percent of our revenue comes from advertising," said Zikalala. "[It will] dent our finances, badly, badly."

Prime time slots

Zikalala added that it would not help if the SABC offered to flight the adverts in slots other than during prime time, because then political parties would not be interested.

"No-one watches between 23:00 and 03:00... It will be a waste of time and the political parties will agree. Unless you get funding from someone... from government. But we won't get funding from government. Even for elections, we don't get funding from government."

Hassen said the SABC was willing to "bend over backwards" to accommodate the draft regulations on radio but not on TV.

"We should not be compelled to do any PEBs [political election broadcast] on TV at all," said Hassen.

- SAPA