{"id":591344,"date":"2022-05-29T07:12:23","date_gmt":"2022-05-29T05:12:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=591344"},"modified":"2022-05-29T07:12:23","modified_gmt":"2022-05-29T05:12:23","slug":"anc-pushing-for-big-changes-to-tv-rules-in-south-africa-including-a-new-tax","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/media\/591344\/anc-pushing-for-big-changes-to-tv-rules-in-south-africa-including-a-new-tax\/","title":{"rendered":"ANC pushing for big changes to TV rules in South Africa – including a new tax"},"content":{"rendered":"

The ruling African National Congress is pushing for sweeping changes around TV regulations in South Africa, including making key sports free to watch, the Sunday Times<\/a><\/strong> reports.<\/p>\n

Among other changes, the party wants a ban on selling exclusive broadcasting rights, while matches involving national teams such as the Springboks should be available to the SABC either for free or at a reduced cost.<\/p>\n

The ANC is also pushing for these games to be shown live rather than on a delayed broadcast.<\/p>\n

The proposed changes, which are included in widely circulated documents ahead of the party’s July conference, would have a direct impact on broadcasting group Multichoice and its DStv service which is seen as the premium sports broadcaster in the country.<\/p>\n

It would also bolster the ailing South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) which has seen TV licence collections plummet in recent years.<\/p>\n

“As the ANC we are saying, let\u2019s have a discussion to ensure that especially sports of national interests are watched by all South Africans,” said Nkenke Kekana, the head of the ANC sub-committee on communications.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo where you have competing rights and interests we are encouraging dialogue. It cannot be that the size of the purse determines the rights of the people.\u201d<\/p>\n

TV licence tax<\/strong><\/p>\n

The move to introduce more sports comes as the SABC plans to introduce a new tax to replace the longstanding TV licence fee.<\/p>\n

The proposal, which is included in the national broadcaster’s latest annual performance plan, will see the implementation of a ‘technology-neutral’ public media levy to replace the existing television licence.<\/p>\n

The SABC noted that this levy would be ‘device-independent’, meaning South Africans who do not have a television set will still be required to contribute.<\/p>\n

The proposal also states that part of the levy’s revenue is expected to be collected by the ‘dominant subscription broadcaster’ – in this case, DStv and Multichoice – on the public broadcaster\u2019s behalf.<\/p>\n

Data for the 2021 financial year shows that the evasion rate currently sits at 82.1%. Overall, the SABC said that 2.2 million TV licence holders managed to settle their fees in full or in part against a known database of 10.3 million television licence holders.<\/p>\n

\n
\n

Read:\u00a0Here are all the shows and movies coming to Disney+ when it launches in South Africa<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The ruling African National Congress is pushing for sweeping changes around TV regulations in South Africa, including making key sports free to watch, the Sunday Times reports.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":136627,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5554],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-591344","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-media","tag-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/591344","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=591344"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/591344\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":591356,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/591344\/revisions\/591356"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/136627"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=591344"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=591344"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=591344"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}