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I recall the ‘pay your TV licence’ ads from back in the day, when SABC 1, 2, and 3, and later e.tv, were the only channels available until DStv came along.

Oh, the many afternoons watching Days of our Lives because there was nothing else on.

Over time, things have changed, and in recent years more and more people have elected not to pay the yearly fee that currently stands at R265.

Like many South Africans, I own a TV, but it isn’t set up to watch anything local. It’s just a monitor, with an Xbox plugged into it, used to game, get lost down the YouTube rabbit hole, and stream Netflix.

Per The Daily Maverick, TV licences, like so many licences and levies in South Africa, are on a downward spiral, and not just because, as is the case for folks like me, they seem pointless because of how we consume content.

The decline in payments can be attributed to one or all of three factors:

• Irrationality or lack of trust in the purpose of the levy;
• Poor leadership decisions; and
• Poor administration/enforcement controls.

Add into the mix “direct and blatant political interference”, and content manipulation in favour of ruling parties (some might call it propaganda…), and it’s no surprise that both advertisers and large sections of the public have chosen to opt out.

As SABC scrambles to make up lost revenue, they’ve proposed a plan to impose fee collections on pay-TV services or streaming channels.

News24 reports that on Tuesday morning, Pinky Kekana, South Africa’s deputy communications minister, told Parliament’s portfolio committee on communications that the SABC wants to broaden the scope of the existing SABC TV licence to include payment from people who own a television, even if they don’t watch any of its channels.

And that’s not the worst of it.

The broadcasting company has listed pay-TV operators like MultiChoice that runs DStv, as well as streaming services like Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Showmax, and others as those they want to force into collecting licence fees on the part of the SABC.

To add insult to injury, even those not using a TV set to watch content would be subject to fees and levies.

“We are not only limiting it to TV”, says Kekana. “We also have other platforms where people consume content, and in all of those areas, that is where we should look at how we are able to get SABC licence fees from those gadgets.”

She’s comparing the plan to municipalities collecting traffic fines and motor vehicle debt from motorists.

To return to the issues that The Daily Maverick pointed out, trying to force South Africans who are already paying for pay-TV and streaming subscriptions to buy into a levy paid to an organisation that has proven itself utterly incompetent is unlikely to be met with compliance.

I doubt this is going to end well for the SABC.

[source:dailymaverick&news24]