A Funding Model for Public Broadcasting

1
A Funding Model for Public Broadcasting

• Presentation by
• Professor Tawana Kupe
• University of the Witwatersrand

2
The Impact of Funding

• Funding financing in broadcasting ( media in
  general) are the key but not only determinant of
  types or forms of broadcasting.
• It follows therefore that a form or type of
  broadcasting must be aligned with an appropriate
  funding model.
• To be sure appropriateness does not mean you
  cannot use a mixed model to SOME degree achieve
  some of the mandates of the type of broadcasting
  that you want.

3
Public Broadcasting

• The World Radio and Television Council (2000)
  defines
• public service broadcasting thus
• Neither commercial nor State-controlled, public
  broadcastings only raison d etre is public
  service.
• It is the publics broadcasting organization it
  speaks to everyone as a citizen.
• Public broadcasters encourage access to
  participation in public life.
• They develop knowledge, broaden horizons enable
  people to better understand themselves by better
  understanding the world others.

4
Trends in Funding Financing

• From the 1990s the major trend is to shift
  funding of public broadcasting from state funding
  to commercial sources.
• This trend has coincided with a trend to operate
  other public services commercially.
• It has also coincided with a rethink on public
  enterprises along the lines of commercialization
  and/or privatization.
• Organizational structures in public broadcasting
  have changed to embrace the commercial emphasis
  e.g. CEOs as the leaders not Director Generals.

5
Trends in Funding Financing

• These trends have often meant a significant
  reduction in state or public funding for public
  broadcasting.
• Public broadcasters have been urged to improve on
  their commercial strategies to get more
  commercial funding.
• Advertising commercial sponsorship have become
  key dominant sources of funding.
• Equally strategies to collect the licence fee
  have been developed diversified to include
  coercive measures.

6
SABCs Sources of Funding

• Over the last few years the sources of the
  SABCs
• Funding are made of the following
• Commercial activities
• Dominant above 75
• License revenue (below 30)
• Other income from operations
• 4. Government support under (5)

7
The SABCs broadened Mandate

• Post 1994 the SABC has been given a broadened
  mandate to meet the demands of a transforming
  society.
• It has had to itself transform from being a state
  broadcaster into a public broadcaster.
• The language cultural mandates a politically
  independent role for a democratic dispensation,
  require huge resources that cannot simply be
  accessed from commercial sources without
  compromising the mandate.

8
A successful Year

• However, the practicability and vast expense of
  multilingual broadcasting remain a major
  challenge.
• .addressing the burgeoning black middle class
  is imperative for advertising and marketing
• Language delivery is part of this, as is local
  content, and television lagged behind for too
  long in serving the diverse language and cultural
  groups
• The impact of the regulatory change is yet to be
  established clearly. We do know, however, that it
  is bound to increase expenditure in terms of
  local content and language delivery.

9
Impact of Commercial Funding on SABC

• Uneven delivery on the local content mandate
  especially the production of news bulletins
  current affairs in all the official languages.
• In particular the unsatisfactory use of
  indigenous African languages has resulted in the
  retention of the colonial apartheid language
  status quo.
• Access to information has therefore been
  somewhat curtailed for the large majority of
  people whose language of ease in communication is
  their mother tongue.

10
SABC 4 5?

• SABC 4 SABC 5 can be seen as the expansion of
  public service channels a good development.
• But they can also be seen as a dramatic example
  of how public service broadcasting in indigenous
  African languages cannot be funded commercially.
• The channels will only take minimal advertising
  English will be restricted.
• SABC 4 5 are the result of a realization that
  commercially driven public service broadcasting
  system is not able to accommodate the demands of
  cultural linguistic diversity.

11
Impact of Commercial Funding on SABC

• Uneven development of local content across
  programme genres drama, comedy, music etc using
  all the languages especially the indigenous
  African languages.
• The failure to diversify the films/entertainment
  shows on television the over reliance on old
  Hollywood fare of the blood, sex crime type and
  mindless shows.
• Uneven development failure to diversify has
  undermined the mandate to develop SA and African
  culture and identity.

12
Impact of Commercial Funding on SABC

• Consequently the SABC
• Is not necessarily the first permanent choice
  of South Africans.
• Is not sufficiently distinct from the commercial
  broadcasters.
• Does not unequivocally set standards
  journalistically break news at all times. Has
  some excellent journalism.
• Has not been able to invest in long term training
  development of staff including journalists
  producers.
• Has not yet invested in new technologies to the
  extent it should have given the changing
  technological environment.

13
Impact of Commercial Funding on SABC

• Overall therefore the SABCs identity as a public
  broadcaster has been compromised. Suffers an
  identity crisis of some sort.
• Organizationally it has the hybrid structures of
  a commercial broadcaster those of a public
  broadcaster corporate management.
• The compromised identity hybrid structure has
  in turn affected its transformative role the
  need to create an open public sphere for South
  Africans, who are first foremost citizens not
  consumers, whose access to media depends on
  socio-economic status.

14
No Three Tier System

• The full implication of the impact of a
  predominantly commercial funding model is that we
  do not have a 3 tier system of broadcasting as
  our broadcasting policy demands.
• Further it means we do not have a genuine public
  broadcaster this has implications for national
  unity cultural identities, democracy
  development our place/role in the global scheme
  of circulation of images and discourses.
• Ultimately it has implications for who we are
  (identities) as South Africans what our
  aspirations are.

15
A New Model is Needed

• A new funding model should enable the SABC to be
  a genuine public broadcaster dedicated to public
  service.
• Such a model should ensure long term assured
  funding which enables the SABC to not only be
  sustainable but to be able to make long term
  plans.
• Long term plans will include production
  strategies, human resource development at all
  levels, in-depth audience research adoption of
  new technologies to improve production
  transmission provide a universal service which
  ensures universal access.

16
The New Funding Model

• It should have public funding at its centre as a
  dominant source that is insulated from policies
  of the government of the day. Need for a
  constitutional amendment!
• Commercial sources but NOT as the dominant
  critical source should be allowed BUT not in
  programmes like news current affairs,
  educational childrens programming.
• The license fee should continue but its
  collection should be linked to programmes that
  build up citizens sense of responsibility not
  coercision.
• If the programming becomes predominantly public
  service licence fees could be easier to collect
  acceptable to citizens.

17
Options

• Africa can best be described as a democratizing
  developing region in a globalizing world.
• Its citizens require information communication
  channels that empower them to both know
  exercise the full range of their civil,
  political, socio-economic, cultural language
  rights as an indivisible whole.
• Broadcasting is the closest to a mass media in
  African including in the more developed countries
  of the region including South Africa.
• Building independent public service broadcasting
  institutions is part of the democratic
  development agenda as both part of building
  sustainable societies engaging processes of
  globalization.
• Funding options need to strike a balance between
  running public service broadcasting institutions
  as a public good ensuring their sustainability
  in the context of largely market driven economic
  policies.

18
Social Market Option

• A social market approach is the best option
  because it recognizes inequalities and seeks to
  narrow them either gradually or more radical
  revolutionary ways.
• A social market allows of appropriate levels of
  market provision which are counter balanced by
  appropriate forms of public subsidy.
• In broadcasting a mixed approach which has at its
  centre public funding that is long term, assured
  insulated from political control short term
  policy changes.
• Light hearted entertainment should be funded
  through advertising.
• But citizen orientated included that which is for
  entertainment programming should be free from the
  direct indirect influences of advertising.
• Where possible the public should contribute
  according to ability.

19
Choices, consequences democratic struggles

• The issue of options is ultimately implicated in
  democratic struggles.
• Africas democratic struggles have never followed
  a linear pattern.
• The apparent rapid democratization processes of
  the 1990s have often been characterized by lack
  of consolidation in some cases reversal.
• Lack of democratic consolidation reversal has
  hampered transformation of state broadcasters
  into public broadcasters.
• Contrary to some belief it is not only lack of
  full political democratization that has hampered
  transformation in broadcasting but also beliefs
  in market orthodoxy in countries which have
  skewed markets.
• The quest for new options must therefore take
  full cognizance of the nature of democratic
  struggles.