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TV ads for political parties?
06/10/2008 20:09 - (SA)
Johannesburg - For the first time in South Africa, political parties could soon be seen flighting adverts on television - but not if the SABC had its way.
The public broadcaster told the Independent Communications Authority of SA (Icasa) that the flighting of political party messages could cost it up to R91.8m in lost advertising revenue.
"It's a lot of money... Eighty percent of our revenue comes from advertising," said SABC news chief Snuki Zikalala. "[It will] dent our finances, badly, badly."
Icasa finished public hearings on Monday on draft regulations which provide a framework under which political party broadcasts in the electronic media will be covered in the run-up to general elections next year.
The regulations stipulate that broadcasting licence holders must make available four two-minute time slots every day for election broadcasts and adverts on radio and television.
"It will be a first for South Africa," said Advertising Standards Authority spokesperson Lilian Mlambo.
The norm in some countries
She added that this was the norm in countries such as the United States.
Icasa's Brenda Ntombela said the SABC would still be able to charge money for political party adverts, but that it would have to flight messages from political parties, called "party election broadcasts (PEBs)" for free in terms of its public service mandate.
Mlambo said there were subtle differences between PEBs and party adverts.
"PEBs are like placing an advertorial in a magazine. It's subtle advertising... but for the purposes of not getting jurisdictions crossed, we call it editorial."
An advertising body like ASA would only regulate the party adverts and not the PEBs.
"It would be a nightmare to administer the PEBs," said Mlambo.
The SABC would have to flight the PEBs at no cost, which meant it could lose millions of rands, said Fakir Hassen, the acting general manager of policy and regulatory affairs at the SABC.
"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."
Excluding television
Hassen proposed that the regulations be changed to exclude television.
But eTV lawyer Mark Rosin, representing both the free-to-air channel and its 24-hour news service which is a channel on MultiChoice, said his clients were "grateful for and welcomed" the draft regulations.
"Advertising is the very bread and butter of e.tv as a broadcaster," he said.
Rosin asked the Icasa councillors to consider extending one of the definitions in the regulations to permit the 24-hour news service to sell airtime directly to political parties. With the current definition, the sales would have to be done through the licence holder, MultiChoice.
Enormous financial implications
Icasa councillor Robert Nkuna asked Rosin, hypothetically, how the broadcast of PEBs for free would impact on a television channel's finances.
"It would have enormous financial implications," replied Rosin.
Nkuna had earlier asked the SABC if it could not produce a more "creative solution" to its concerns.
He pointed out to the SABC that it had known about the draft regulations since 2006.
Hassen argued that the proposed regulations would not only have a negative effect on the SABC's finances, but would also fail to create a level playing field for political parties.
He said the smaller parties would not have the finances to create television adverts which would give the bigger parties an unfair advantage.
Political parties will be allocated airtime according to their size and level of representation in parliament.
- SAPA
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