Total blackout warning for the SABC
Portfolio Committee on Communications and Digital Technologies chair Khusela Diko has warned that the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) could face a signal blackout by the end of 2025.
Speaking during a briefing from the Economic Cluster chairpersons, Diko said state signal distributor Sentech could not afford to continue “carrying” the SABC without the broadcaster paying its service fees.
“They indicated that they don’t think they can continue with their operations in the current state beyond the end of December this year,” she said.
Diko explained that the SABC is Sentech’s main client, and the state signal distributor is bleeding more than R70 million each month to subsidise the public broadcaster’s signal costs. “This is unsustainable,” she added.
SABC CEO Nomsa Chabeli recently also warned that Sentech switching off the broadcaster’s transmitters was a real posssiblity.
“Because of the legacy debt from Sentech, we are at a point where they have indicated that they will start switching off transmitters,” the CEO said.
When a TV station’s transmitters are turned off, the station’s signal isn’t broadcast, resulting in a loss of service.
Earlier in the year, Media Monitoring Africa’s William Bird said the risk of a blackout was due to the government “actively defunding” the public broadcaster.
Bird believes the state should cover the SABC’s signal distribution costs, but it is instead left to carry the enormous bill, making its model less sustainable.
“The scenario is catastrophic. You have the SABC’s finances plummeting. You have the government and Parliament failing to do their job,” he said.
Bird said the government’s failure to provide a bailout or loan guarantee has put the public broadcaster in an impossible position.
“It’s not a stretch that we will be looking at a blackout,” he said. The broadcaster narrowly avoided a blackout in the past year, but the event seems closer to becoming a reality.
Sentech’s digital migration problem
South Africa’s much-delayed digital migration project is also putting financial pressure on Sentech. The process has dragged along at a snail’s pace since 2008, with numerous missed deadlines.
The project aims to transition television from analogue signals to digital terrestrial television (DTT), which involves distributing set-top boxes to millions of South Africans.
The set-top boxes are required for converting DTT signals so they can be displayed on older TV sets without built-in digital tuners.
This is critical to ensuring all South Africans have access to public TV when analogue signals are switched off.
While the government provided free set-top boxes for indigent households for many years, a limited number of homes took up the offer.
Broadcasters like eMedia and the SABC also fear they could lose a significant number of viewers in the “missing middle” who do not qualify for the free boxes but cannot afford to buy their own.
This has come at a significant cost to Sentech, which must maintain both analogue and digital TV signals, known as dual illumination, until the project is finalised.
In November 2024, the Department of Communications and Digital Technologies revealed that dual illumination had cost R1.23 billion over the past 10 years.
It added that no funding had been allocated for dual illumination in the previous financial year, 2024/25, while the practice was estimated to cost between R90 million and R167 million annually.
The table below shows South Africa’s annual dual illumination spending between 2014/15 and 2023/24.
| Year | Dual Illumination cost |
|---|---|
| 2023/24 | R131,236,588 |
| 2022/23 | R136,398,570 |
| 2021/22 | R167,082,781 |
| 2020/21 | R146,000,150 |
| 2019/20 | R130,562,733 |
| 2018/19 | R134,933,181 |
| 2017/18 | R89,805,901 |
| 2016/17 | R100,727,869 |
| 2015/16 | R100,727,689 |
| 2014/15 | R89,348,963 |
| Total | R1,226,824,425 |
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