SABC: No England rugby Tests Isidingo burns

15 Jun 2012

Rugby fans hoping to tune into the South African Broadcast Corporation's (SABC's) delayed broadcast of the Tests between the Springboks and England at Ellis Park on Saturday and in Port Elizabeth next week will have to make other plans after the national broadcaster dropped the bombshell that the matches would be broadcast only on radio, writes Zeena Isaacs. Also on the TV front, a fire struck the Isidingo set, reports the Sowetan.

SABC: No England rugby Tests Isidingo burns

For more:

Business Day: SABC channels will not show England rugby Test... At best you will only be able to hear it live - on radio...
The decision regarding the broadcast of the England-Bok Tests was made after a meeting earlier this week between SABC acting chief operations officer Hlaudi Motsoeneng and SuperSport International CEO Happy Ntshingila in which they failed to reach an agreement on the terms under which the SABC could broadcast the matches. SuperSport has the broadcast rights to the Test series.
While the SABC insisted it wanted to broadcast the matches live, as opposed to the usual delayed broadcast, as it was paying for the content, SuperSport as the rights holder, rejected the request.
Talks break down
The meeting followed a breakdown in talks between SuperSport and the SABC last Friday over broadcast rights for the opening Test. That resulted in the SABC having to cancel its TV and radio broadcasts, despite running promotions on both mediums for the match.

In a joint statement by the SABC and SuperSport yesterday, Motsoeneng said: "The SABC has decided, as a principle, that for the events that it has rights to (such as in respect of Bafana Bafana) it will broadcast on a live basis. In the case of rugby, SABC does not hold rights and is therefore not able to broadcast these matches on a live basis."
Ntshingila made it clear that SuperSport was willing to offer the matches to the SABC under the usual terms, but it had refused.
"SuperSport offered to sublicense the television rights to the SABC of Test matches for broadcast on a delayed basis as it has done in the past," said Ntshingila. "I am pleased that the SABC had acquired radio rights to the Test matches."
Source: Business Day via I-Net Bridge
Sowetan: Show goes on for Isidingo despite fire... The bad news is that the fire broke out at all, the good news - for the soapie's fans, anyway, is that a number of episodes are "in the can", so they won't miss their favourite show.
The cause of the fire is being investigated.

Source: I-Net Bridge

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