| SABC ‘Spending 10% on Local Content’ |
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 The SABC spends less than 40% of its budget to put content on screens, an independent producer has charged. by Jocelyn Newmarch The TV production industry, which relies on the SABC for most of its work, has been owed money for more than six months and new programmes are not being commissioned. In protest, independent producers staged a symbolic hanging outside the SABC’s offices in Auckland Park yesterday. Marc Schwinges, of the South African Screen Federation, said according to his interpretation of the SABC’s 2008 annual report, just 38% of the broadcaster’s expenditure went towards content and the costs associated with it. This expenditure includes signal distribution, licensing of content, sports rights, news broadcasts and staff employed in the content hub and in the newsrooms, as well as money spent on local content — all matters which are the SABC’s core business, Schwinges said. According to his calculation, 10%- 12% of the SABC’s budget goes directly towards local content. Schwinges said he had attended a financial presentation in June given by the SABC’s chief financial officer, Robin Nicholson. It showed that 10% of the SABC’s expenditure went directly to local content. “So what is the rest spent on? The largest amount goes to the staff who are running this huge bureaucracy,” he said. Schwinges said content was produced mainly by freelance workers, who are counted as contractors rather than employees. He said about 80000 people relied on the TV production industry for work. Because the industry was so reliant on the SABC, about 60000 people would be directly affected by the broadcaster’s cash flow crisis, Schwinges said. According to the 2008 annual report, the SABC spent R2,7bn on programme, film and sports rights in total. This includes R39m spent on “work in progress”. The report notes in its list of assets that programming worth R542m is held by the SABC. It is likely that this refers to programmes commissioned by the SABC from local independent producers who are then given monthly payments for the duration of filming. The SABC produces only news and sport in- house, and relies on foreign programming and local producers for all other TV programmes on air. Nicholson’s own report for that year, contained in the annual report, shows that the SABC’s cost of programming, film and sports rights, as well as broadcast costs, rose 22,5% compared to the previous year. Signal distribution and linking costs rose 13,9%. However, employee costs rose 38,25% over the previous year. The SABC’s spokesman, Kaizer Kganyago, said he did not have the documents at hand to verify Schwinges’ claims. He said the SABC was “engaging with” the producers. “We are deferring programmes, not cutting back, in order to control our cash flow and to pay what is owed to (the production industry),” he said. “We are in the process of paying them and we can’t, while paying them, create new debt,” he said. This year’s SABC annual report is not yet available. http://www.businessday.co.za |
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