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The 1996 Spry
Memorial Lecture
Summary
Dr. Ruth Teer-Tomaselli (Centre
for Cultural and Media Studies, University of Natal, Durban, South Africa)
"The Public Broadcaster and Democracy in
Transformation" Montreal, 5 November 1996/Vancouver, 13 November 1996
THE PUBLIC BROADCASTER AND
DEMOCRACY IN TRANSFORMATION
Ruth Elizabeth Teer-Tomaselli
Broadcasting entered the public arena
in the second half of the 1920s. In South Africa, radio stations were set up in Durban,
Cape Town, and Johannesburg, all under private ownership, and, by 1929, the companies were
amalgamated as the African Broadcasting Company. In 1934, the government of the Union of
South Africa commissioned the then Director General of the BBC, John Reith, to write a
charter for a national Public Broadcaster, and, in 1936, the African Broadcasting Company
became the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC).
Reith's vision of what constituted an ideal public service
broadcasting can be summarised as follows:
provide geographic universal access;
provide universal programming which would include education, entertainment and
information;
be
financially independent of government and the commercial sector through the raising of
licence fees;
be
editorially independent; and
be a
unifying force for a single national identity.
This now "classic" version of
public service broadcasting is an essentially modernist one. It incorporates all the
optimistic hope of rational discourse and the firm belief in the edifying and uplifting
potentials of broadcasting as a conveyer of "culture". It is premised on the
understanding that the broadcasting spectrum is limited and belongs to the nation. The
government, while it may act as the guardian of the nation-state, should be kept at arm's
length from the day to day operation of the broadcaster. Broadcasting, in this view, is a
public good belonging to the whole nation, not to be exploited for private or sectarian
gain of either a monetary or ideological kind.
From its inception, public service
broadcasting was expected to accomplish an important democratic and cultural mission. It
was given the task of providing the entire population with information, education and
quality entertainment. For both economic and ideological reasons, the tasks implied in
this mandate could only be performed by a state-regulated monopoly. Under these auspices,
public service broadcasting prevailed until the early 1980s. Since then, the global media
landscape has undergone fundamental changes as deregulation of broadcasting was launched
in almost all countries. National broadcasting systems were deregulated and private
providers were admitted to the market, while the state facilitated and promoted the
development of the technological infrastructure and was occasionally involved in its
operation.
Not all the problems facing public
broadcasting today are unique to South Africa. Most of the dynamics which plague
broadcasting are of international import. Throughout the world, media industries are
undergoing major changes both at the level of technology as well as political economy.
Seven distinct, but frequently overlapping trajectories in the developing of modern media
organizations are evident. These are :
the
growing concentration of resources within media industries, which occurs at the same time
as the contrary process of fracturing;
the
process of diversification, in which industries based in one sector of the economy spread
their investments, and their risks, not only into horizontally and vertically integrated
activities, but expanding into areas which are traditionally outside their core business;
the
intensified process of globalization, working together with the dialectical processes of
localisation and the rise of the politics of identity;
the
international movement towards deregulation, opening opportunities to new market entrants,
which has typified the ideological perspective of the post-cold war era;
the
growth of media technologies and convergence which threatens the pre-eminence of the
public broadcaster as the voice of the nation;
the
loss of legitimacy and credibility in the face of rampant commercialisation and pandering
to governments.
the
increasing difficulty in remaining solvent in the face of massive competition.
While each of these trends can be
supported by even the most cursory glance at the international literature, they are
clearly illustrated within South Africa as well.
Funding and the Public Broadcaster: the Crux of the Dilemma
The greatest crisis of public service broadcasting is that
as income diminishes, costs rise. The basic difficulty with the SABC (and this is probably
instructive of many third world, "developing" or "south" broadcasters)
is the contradiction between their public service mandate, and access to public funds. By
public funds, I mean those funds paid directly or indirectly from the public -- and
excludes money directly from the state. At present, the SABC receives no direct funding
from the state: eighteen percent (18%) of its budget comes from licences; seventy eight
percent (78%) from advertising; and four percent (4%) from sponsorship and commercial
sales.
The problem in South Africa has been
exacerbated by the regulator -- the IBA -- which has imposed a mandate, but only
recommended a mechanism of funding, a distinction which indicates the divide between the
normative realm of the public service mandate, and the prosaic realm of economics. The
mandate of a public service broadcaster can be extrapolated almost indefinitely. It is an
important exercise to stretch the corporate imagination, and pose the questions: What if?
What if resources were infinite and imagination the only impediment, what could we do? In
the real world, idealism must be tempered with pragmatism, and 'what if' translates to
'what can we, given the limitations of our resources'...
The SABC's public service mandate
Historically, the SABC played an important part in both
constructing and supporting the apartheid structures of the pre-1991 South Africa. In the
1980s the SABC explicitly supported the then government in its effort to combat the 'total
onslaught of revolutionary forces", seen to be spearheaded by the ANC in exile. In
January 1991, under the leadership of Wynand Harmse, an accountant by training and
inclination, the emphasis within the SABC moved from power to finance as the dominant
organizing principle. The SABC was reorganized into 'Business Units', each with its own
financial responsibility as a profit-generating entity. In the early 1990s, the SABC
showed a substantial surplus, but for 1996-97, there is a projected shortfall of R56
million. How did this happen? After an extensive process of public nominations and
hearing, the election of the new Board of Directors of the SABC, announced in May 1993,
can be seen as the point heralding the "new" broadcast environment. In line with
the social, economic and political changes taking place within the country as a whole, the
SABC was in the vanguard of visible change. To this end, much creative energy was expended
on negotiating a new framework which would act as the blueprint for the task of
transforming a former state broadcaster into a full-fledged public broadcaster.
The most visible evidence of the SABC's
new approach has been the reconfiguration of television channels. These previously served
the interests of the middle classes only: predominantly, white, 'coloured' and Indian,
with an increasingly large percentage of black people falling into this category. The aim
of the 're-launch', which took place in February 1996, precisely was to move closer to
delivering public broadcasting by providing more of the country's eleven official
languages, as well as ensuring that the seven which were already broadcast were done so
with greater equity.
While much of this work was aimed at
television, in radio too, substantial changes needed to be implemented, most notably the
upgrading of the African language channels, and the extension and improvement of the news
division. In order to put into effect such an ambitious plan, the mandate of the SABC was
stretched considerably.
Local content programming, so essential in
the project of protecting national identity and national culture, as well as providing for
the diverse language needs of the audience (particularly when it includes a high
proportion of drama, documentary and sport), is an enormously expensive enterprise, as any
national broadcaster will testify. Audiences used to exogenous programming, in which the
quality typically is very professional, are not prepared to settle for inferior
productions, simply on the grounds that they are "local".
In addition, there have been a number of
"one-time" (but periodically recurring) expenses, notably the coverage of
elections (national and regional) and voter education coverage of the truth and
reconciliation commission, the coverage of Parliamentary debates, and the like.
Greater financial liability has also been
imposed by the shrinking value of the Rand when measured against other currencies, notably
the American, Canadian and Australian dollar, as well as Pounds Sterling, the currencies
in which most programming and capital equipment is paid for.
Currently, the expected income of the
Corporation has been drastically cut. An important factor here has been the increasingly
notable "culture of non-payment" which has seen the television licence payment
shrink to 18 percent of the viewing public. The main source of revenue -- advertising --
has dropped substantially, both on radio and television. The relaunching and
reconfiguration of the television channels, with new a programming mix, new formats, and a
more multi-cultural, multi-ethnic mix, clearly has played a part in the reluctance of
advertisers to buy broadcast space. However, television viewing and radio listening are
highly routine domestic habits, and any change, let alone a major change across three of
the country's four channels, will of itself result in substantial audience reshuffling
before the new rhythms of the service are negotiated.
To complicate matters, at the request of
the IBA, and in an attempt to 'deregulate' the airwaves, the SABC recently sold off six of
its regional radio stations, all of which had been run on commercial lines and had
generated a profit which was used to cross-subsidise the less profitable public service
stations. Together, the loss of revenue from the privatization of these stations amounts
to R90 million per annum, calculated on the 1995 figures.
Do We Still Need Public Service Broadcasting and How Can it Survive?
Broadcasting driven by a purely commercial
logic can not ensure that a rich diversity of programming is available to audiences who
are not considered to be profitable. In this respect, commercial media are less concerned
with wide public access than they are with profit. Thus, for the purposes of commercial
broadcasters, universality is not important: what is important is to cater for a critical
mass of well-defined audience segments with the wherewithal to purchase specific
categories of products. Audiences perceived to fall outside of the parameters of
consumers, or who are too expensive to reach, are not catered for.
The range of programming is also limited
by commercial considerations. There is enormous competition to provide information goods
to those who can pay for them, or those whose economic status defines them as attractive
audiences to advertisers. This affects the ability of the public broadcaster to provide
some categories of programming which may be seen to be in the public interest. The classic
issues of programming for the very young; curriculum-based education; the elderly and
disabled, including close-caption broadcasting or sign-language inserts for the deaf; as
well as minority language and cultural groups readily come to mind here.
The need for a public broadcasting service
has characteristically been justified on two grounds: the protection of national identity
and culture; and the provision of information, education and entertainment to those
sectors of society which are economically non-profitable. The arguments made in the
preceding sections indicate to me that public service broadcasting still has an important
role to play within the national broadcasting environment. Public service media create
programmes for audiences, commercial services create audiences for advertisers. However,
and the caveat is important, this will not be the same sort of public sector broadcasting
we have defined in classical terms.
It is no longer possible to envisage a
national public broadcaster which can be all things to all people, fulfilling all
functions of broadcasting in the old style of the utopian Reithian model. For the reasons
outlined earlier in the paper, it is neither financially, nor ideologically possible to
present a single monopoly broadcaster integrated across all broadcasting functions.
If we are to find a space in which the
public broadcaster is able not only to survive, but to thrive, then we need to be able to
place it within a matrix of broadcasting alternatives, which takes account of the reality
of new technologies, commercial competition and the changing milieu of post-modern
nationalisms. Thus instead of speaking of a national public service broadcaster, we need
to be able to speak of a broadcasting environment into which the public service
broadcaster must fit. The whole of this environment will then be a flexible entity of
interlocking parts, in which co-ordination, rather than centralization, will be the chief
organising principle.
The community broadcaster will play a
significant role within this broadcast environment. With the rise in the politics of
identity, both regionally/locally-based community services, as well as those based on a
community of interest, language or ethnicity, are increasingly important -- not only in
South Africa, but in the global context as well.
When not detracting from the important
role to be played by regional broadcasts within the ambit of the national service, the
truly local can only be serviced by a network of community broadcasters. The national
public broadcaster and the local, community and regional broadcasters should see
themselves as partners in the supply of broadcasting services -- and not as competitors.
If, as I have argued, it is desirable that
public service broadcasting should survive, and with a wider range of broadcasting
services, then there needs to be a protected space within the broadcasting environment.
This needs to be done in such a way that the integrity and independence of the broadcaster
is not compromised. It is the job of the state to provide the regulatory environment, and
the job of the media institutions to fulfil their mandates.
But the greatest challenge is still the
vexed question of financing. There is a Nigerian proverb which sums up the dilemma of
public broadcasting most aptly, by comparing it to a communally owned goat, the pride of
the village. If everyone claims ownership of the goat, but no one feeds it, then the goat
will die. It would be a great pity to see public broadcasting starve to death because no
one was responsible for feeding it.
(summary by Marc Raboy)
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