The story
Company history
Early years
Radio broadcasting in South Africa began in 1923, under the auspices of South African Railways, before three radio services were licensed: the Association of Scientific and Technical Societies (AS&TS) in Johannesburg, the Cape Peninsular Publicity Association in Cape Town and the Durban Corporation, which began broadcasting in 1924.
These merged into the African Broadcasting Company in 1927, owned by I.W. Schlesinger, a wealthy businessman, but on 1 August 1936, they were sold to the SABC, established that year through an Act of Parliament. The SABC took over the African Broadcasting Company's staff and assets. It maintained a state monopoly on radio until the launch in December 1979 of Capital Radio 604, then Radio 702 in 1980. Although the subscription-funded television service M-Net launched in 1986, the SABC had a monopoly on free-to-air television until the launch of e.tv in 1998.
During National Party rule from 1948, it came under increasing accusations of being biased towards the ruling party. At one time most of its senior management were members of the Broederbond, the Afrikaner secret society, and later from institutions like Stellenbosch University.
The SABC was a radio service until the introduction of television in 1976. There were three main SABC radio stations: the English Service (later known as Radio South Africa), the Afrikaans Service (later known as Radio Suid-Afrika and Afrikaans Stereo) and the commercial station, Springbok Radio.
Programmes on the English and Afrikaans services mainly consisted of news; plays such as The Forsyte Saga, Story of an African Farm, and The Summons, written and produced in South Africa; serious talk shows; BBC radio shows; children's programmes, such as Sound Box; and light music featuring South African orchestras, arrangers, musicians and singers. Accomplished musicians such as pianist and composer Charles Segal featured on all three stations regularly in shows like Piano Playtime. Accordionist Nico Carstens was a regular on the Afrikaans programmes.
Recent history
An IBA report on the state of the broadcasting industry in South Africa was released on 29 August 1995. Recommendations were given for the SABC to lose one of its three television channels, with the network being used for private television, demanding the creation of two or three private networks. The broadcaster would be restructured, and Sentech would be separated. Other recommendations included the sale of seven radio stations, while being granted eleven radio stations, nine of which in individual Bantu languages, provisions of an hour a day of regional programming windows on television and radio, at an estimated cost of 262 million rand/year, reintroduction of a third channel but on satellite television and the provision of an "education and information driven service" to the subcontinental region.
All of the channels were set to be rebranded by March 1996, in line with a restructuring that began in the 1993 CODESA talks. Preliminary changes were set to take place in 1993, but were delayed after the elections in April 1994.
In November 1995, Africa Monitor reported that the SABC was in talks with Channel 4 to deliver its television channels by satellite, to cover the entire population. Up until then, it was believed that a quarter of the national population received at least one of the three channels. By January 1996 a fourth channel carrying Channel 4's programmes was set to begin, and would convert to digital in July 1996, with the aim of creating an eight-channel pay-TV service.
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At the end of 1995, the SABC lost its contract with Sky News. Footage on news bulletins broadcast by the corporation's television channels was now supplied by BBC World.
On 4 February 1996, two years after the ANC came to power, the SABC reorganised its three TV channels, so as to be more representative of different language groups. The repositioning of the networks gave the SABC's television service the chance to be "the new voice and the new vision of the rainbow nation". Under the new structure, SABC TV was compared to a "tower of Babel" regarding SABC 1 and SABC 2's programming structure, in the eleven official languages, while SABC 3 was all in English. The relaunch party was also heavily criticised by some, such as Angela Van Schalkwyk, who mentioned that an American face presented the new television offer. This resulted in the downgrading of Afrikaans by reducing its airtime from 50% to 15%, a move that alienated many Afrikaans speakers. Starting July 1997, the corporation was commercialised.
In late 1998, the SABC finally started broadcasting its channels on DStv, per an agreement with Sentech to convert its channels to digital. The agreement encompassed its three national terrestrial networks, Bop TV and its thirteen radio stations, with the hopes of starting two pan-continental television networks, an entertainment channel and a news channel.
The launch of e.tv prompted the SABC to restructure its three television channels in late September 1998. The strategies were due to e.tv's promise that the service would be a "full-spectrum" channel as opposed to the niche programming of both the SABC and M-Net. SABC 1 repositioned itself as an entertainment channel for South African youth and young adults, SABC 2 would carry content related to educational and social issues from the rest of Africa to South African audiences, SABC 3 concentrated on a mix of news, current affairs and entertainment. Two satellite channels, available on DStv, opened on 16 November 1998, SABC Africa and Best of Africa (later renamed Africa2Africa).
In line with its ambitions to be "the pulse of Africa's creative spirit" (SABC's tagline at the turn of the millennium), the SABC opened up to protocols and co-operation agreements with partners such as URTNA, FRU and the Television Trust for the Environment, eyeing in at the rest of Africa.
On 8 August 2003, the SABC unveiled its current logo, coinciding with the Your SABC campaign, which was unveiled on its three television channels at 7:30pm that day. Simultaneously, the Topsport brand was ditched in favour of SABC Sport.
The SABC has since been accused of favouring the ruling ANC party, mostly in news. It remains dominant in the broadcast media.
Criticism intensified around 2003–2005, when it was accused of a wide range of shortcomings including self-censorship, lack of objectivity and selective news coverage.
On 20 October 2020, SABC and the government were in discussion to get TV and streaming providers in South Africa to collect TV licence on their behalf.
On 27 March 2021, SABC and eMedia Investments expanded their partnership which allowed OpenView customers to receive 3 additional channels as well as their 19 radio stations.
Leaders
Director General of the SABC:
Chairman of the SABC Board:
Establishment
Following its establishment in 1936, the SABC established services in what were then the country's official languages, English and Afrikaans, with the Afrikaans service being established in 1937. Broadcasts in languages such as Zulu, Xhosa, Sesotho and Tswana followed in 1940.
1996 restructuring
In 1996 the SABC carried out a significant restructuring of their services. The main English-language radio service became SAfm. The new service, after some initial faltering, soon developed a respectable listenership and was regarded as a flagship for the new democracy. However, government interference in the state broadcaster in 2003 saw further changes to SAfm which reversed the growth and put it in rapid decline once more. Today it attracts only 0.6% of the total population to its broadcasts. The main Afrikaans radio service was renamed Radio Sonder Grense (literally 'Radio Without Borders') in 1995 and has enjoyed greater success with the transition.
By contrast, SABC Radio's competitors, like Primedia-owned Radio 702, Cape Talk and 94.7 Highveld Stereo have grown steadily in audience and revenue, while other stations such as the black-owned and focused YFM and Kaya FM have also attracted black audiences.
Early history (1975–1995)
In 1975, after years of controversy over the introduction of television, the SABC was finally allowed to introduce a colour TV service, which began experimental broadcasts in the main cities on 5 May 1975, before the service went nationwide on 6 January 1976. Initially, the TV service was funded entirely through a licence fee just like the UK, but began advertising in 1978. The SABC (both Television and Radio) is still partly funded by the licence fee (currently R250 a year).
The service initially broadcast only in English and Afrikaans, with an emphasis on religious programming on Sundays. A local soap opera, The Villagers, set on a gold mine, was well received while other local productions like The Dingleys were panned as amateurish.
The majority of acquired programming on South African television came from the United States, although owing to their opposition to apartheid, some production companies stopped selling programmes to the country.
The British actors' union Equity had already started a boycott of programme sales to South Africa, which was not lifted until 1993. However, the Thames Television police drama series The Sweeney and Van der Valk, were briefly shown on SABC TV, as was the original version of Thunderbirds.
Many imported programmes were dubbed into Afrikaans and other indigenous languages, but in 1985, in order to accommodate English speakers, the SABC began to simulcast the original-language audio of series on an FM radio service called Radio 2000, allowing viewers to watch them in the original language; the first English-language series to be simulcast was Miami Vice.
SABC TV also produced lavish musical shows featuring the most popular South African composers, solo musicians, bands and orchestras. For example, the pianist and composer, Charles Segal, was given a half-hour special show: The Music of Charles Segal, where a selection of his music was performed by various local artists, such as Zane Adams, SABC Orchestra and others. However, it also broadcast pop music series like Pop Shop, which consisted of overseas and local music, and Double Track, which consisted entirely of local acts.
With a limited budget, early programming aimed at children tended to be quite innovative, and programmes such as the Afrikaans-language puppet shows Haas Das se Nuus Kas and Oscar in Asblikfontein are still fondly remembered by many.
On 1 January 1981, two services were introduced, TV2 broadcasting in Zulu and Xhosa and TV3 broadcasting in Sotho and Tswana, both targeted at a black urban audience. The main channel, then called TV1, was divided evenly between English and Afrikaans, as before. In 1986, a new service called TV4 was introduced, carrying sports and entertainment programming, taking over the frequencies used by TV2 and TV3, which then had to end broadcasting at 21:00.
In 1991, TV2, TV3 and TV4 were combined into a new service called CCV (Contemporary Community Values). A third channel was introduced known as TSS, or Topsport Surplus Sport, Topsport being the brand name for the SABC's sport coverage, but this was replaced by NNTV (National Network TV), an educational, non-commercial channel, in 1993.
From Wikipedia’s article on SABC, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4