Rural community radio's ‘road to perdition'

Besides, the fact that most of them operate outside the corporate world where little or no economic activity occurs, means that the chance of attracting corporate advertising to make some money remains slim.

Public Service Broadcasting Bill

South Africa's Public Service Broadcasting Bill, which is on the verge of shaping the broadcasting sector's future, has proposed to establish a Public Broadcast Fund as a measure of ensuring greater sustainability for community broadcasters.

However, while these radio stations continue their march on the road to perdition, and many of them are threatened with ‘death' by Sentech for failure to pay signal distribution costs, government and relevant institutions continue to talk, and twist and turn with very little action.

“We cannot wait until the bill is implemented to assist community radio stations. We have to come up with urgent ways to help them out,” Franklin Huizies, CEO of the National Community Radio Forum (NCRF), told a media briefing yesterday, Wednesday, 20 January 20101, in Braamfontein, Johannesburg.

Huizies told Bizcommunity.com last night that rural community radio stations need a signal strength of up to 500 watts to broadcast efficiently, whereas urban community stations only need 250 watts.

Up to R30 000

Because of this, some of them pay up to R30 000 every month for signal distribution costs, which is a fortune for such struggling organisations.

Huizies told reporters: “Community radio stations are struggling financially, with one of the major contributing reasons being the high signal distribution rates charged by Sentech.

“NCRF appeals to the Department of Communications (DOC) to assist in relieving the plight of many stations that are currently threatened with being switched off by Sentech due to defaulting on payments.”

The worst part of the saga is that the PSB Bill is forcing community media to form ‘partnerships' with municipalities - a move experts fear could crush their editorial independence and transform them into government's propaganda puppets.

Rejected

But, NCRF in its final submission and comments out rightly rejected these ‘partnerships-to-be'.

Huizies stated: “We reiterate our view that for community media to fulfil its role in our participatory democracy - facilitating meaningful freedom of expression and access to information - it must be independent of the government and other powerful sections of society and accountable to the broad community it serves.”

Furthermore, NCRF is worried that the proposed bill does not address some of the root causes for existing challenges facing community media, such as the need for preferential transmission rates, and it fears that some of the proposals could exacerbate some of the challenges.

“The bill is based on a number of assumptions about the problems in the community broadcasting sector and not on thorough, detailed, research.

“In such situation there is a real danger that some of the solutions may have unintended negative consequences. Therefore DOC needs to undertake a deep research and analysis.”

For more, go to www.ncrf.org.za and www.doc.gov.za.