The South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) is clutching at straws to keep Mzansi entertained and the proof of its ill-performing content is all in the numbers.
Why is SABC losing its grasp on South Africa’s audience?
On Wednesday, SA FM sparked a heated debate on social media when, in a tweet, the state-owned radio station revealed SABC “has suffered its biggest loss in revenue collection so far.”
Much of this, the radio station revealed, can be attributed to the broadcaster’s inability to retain its audience. According to an unreleased revenue report, SABC absorbed a R600 million loss in revenue due to a “significant audience decline on its platforms in the past two years.”
The SABC says it has suffered its biggest loss in revenue collection so far. It says it has lost over R 600 million due to a significant audience decline on its platforms in the past two years #sabcnews
— SAfm news (@SAfmnews) May 4, 2022
While this was news for many commenters who expressed their shock on social media, a look at SABC’s annual report for the 2020/2021 financial year suggests this was inevitable, and unfortunately, the worst may be yet to come.
The public broadcaster recorded some positives in the observed financial year.
A net loss of R530 million was recorded in 2020/2021, which represents a 4% decline on the previous year’s sum. Online TV licence payments increased 26% year-on-year and the broadcaster closed off the observed period 17% below budget.
Of course, the state-owned media company also applauded its efforts to reduce irregular expenditure by 45% to R111 million. However, these positives were almost dwarfed by the red flags noted in the company’s revenue performance.
Sure, much of the blame was laid on COVID-19 but with South Africans forced indoors by harsh lockdown regulations, the public broadcaster could not muster up engaging content to sustain growth in its audience.
As a result, SABC’s total revenue, year-on-year, declined by 12% to R4.97 billion, 15.8% (R788 million) of which came from TV licence payments.
The latter, compared to the previous financial year, saw a 0.4% decline, and more shockingly, out of all the TV licence fees billed to customers, only 18% was collected.
It seems, hosting popular soapies like 7de Laan, Uzalo and Generations is not enough for SABC to compete at a high level with streaming services like Netflix and homegrown Showmax, whose main attraction is reality TV.
For the public broadcaster, the future remains bleak with no sight of a light at the end of the tunnel, especially considering the fact that in 2021/2022 expenditure on content creation was reduced by 20%.