Bit of a bleak Monday, right?

Spare a thought for the independent TV producers who make content for the SABC, left out in the dark by a state institution that has all but been run into the ground.

News24 obtained a memo sent to the general managers of finance at the SABC last Monday, and it shows that they will not be able to pay their bills for the month of February.

Let’s focus on the plight of the TV producers first:

Invoices are usually paid by the SABC in the morning on the last day of the month, but most independent TV producers saw nothing come in…

Only a fifth of the total owed to producers was paid, according to some of the eight senior SABC insiders and two former SABC senior managers City Press spoke to this week.

The memo revealed that R32m was available for the TV division, which had a producers’ bill estimated at R150m.

This has been the standard monthly amount paid for productions since controversial former SABC boss Hlaudi Motsoeneng announced an 80% local content quota for SABC TV in July.

Before Motsoeneng’s unilateral decision, the monthly bill, said a former SABC manager, was closer to R100m.

Sources repeatedly told City Press that no risk assessment was conducted before Motsoeneng’s quotas were implemented.

Of course Hlaudi is not solely responsible for the mess, given that most of the remaining top brass at the SABC can politely be called incompetent, but he must shoulder a large part of the blame.

James Aguma, the acting chief executive officer (CEO), is another who deserves to be turfed out of the broadcaster’s offices:

[He] appears to have misled people during two different meetings this week by insisting that the broadcaster’s financial situation was not critical and everyone would be paid.

He made these claims, sources say, in a meeting with Parliament’s standing committee on public accounts (Scopa), which visited the SABC and confronted executives about the state of the broadcaster.

“Scopa asked James directly: ‘Is the SABC in financial crisis?’ James [pictured above] assured him lavishly that we were not,” said one source.

And in a meeting with the pending interim board, another source said that Aguma “assured the board that everyone would be paid”.

You can bet the bigwigs were paid on time, whereas those producers (who also pay actors, directors, technical crew, caterers, equipment suppliers and car hire companies amongst others) were caught totally unaware.

The plummeting advertising revenue is one reason for the shortfall, and no prizes for guessing who’s behind that mess:

The SABC’s primary source of income is adverts flighted on TV.

Advertisers must pay when they book slots to flight their ads, but, “because of Hlaudi’s meddling and schedules being changed to make way for local content, ads weren’t scheduled or flighted where they should be”, said one [source].

“So advertisers now want a refund before they pay again. This has a big affect on revenue and also on the sales team.”

Another said: “The climate to do business is nearly impossible. The rate card has dropped in value to try to attract ads. A discounted rate is being offered.

“The advertising sales team is devastated – they can’t meet targets. They get a small basic salary, but they live off commission.”

No mention of the disaster would be complete without talking about the 90% local music content implemented across SABC-owned radio stations.

Not only are the stations suffering through decreased revenue, but the artists themselves have been misled:

A source close to radio advertising sales said: “Radio has made almost no money since the 90% local quota was introduced by Hlaudi in May.

“In a finance meeting, the sales division said radio was 35% to 40% behind on its targets. And the big revenue spinners, such as 5FM, Metro and Ukhozi, have plunged.”

Another said: “An English, urban station such as Metro FM is really bleeding. It’s scary.”

Other sources were also asked if the 90% quota was to blame.

One said: “We can only speculate and say the numbers are down because the audience didn’t like the 90%-10% concept because it no longer talked to the target market of the advertisers.”

This week, City Press learnt that Motsoeneng’s promised increase in royalties to local musicians had not been implemented.

It was supposed to go up from 3% needle time collection on radio to 4%.

But now the SABC and the Southern African Music Rights Organisation (Samro), say sources, find themselves at the Copyright Tribunal, deadlocked.

“There is no way can we pay Samro 4%,” said a well-placed source. “We couldn’t even pay 3%.

The parliamentary portfolio committee on communications are looking into ways to solve the crisis, and are apparently “committed to ensuring that the SABC goes back to its glory days”.

Not too sure about which glory days they are referring to, but I think most of us will settle for a time when they could pay their bills.

[source:news24]