South Africa’s public broadcaster, already suffering from a lack of licence fee income and a downturn in advertising, is facing a controversial arbitration over its ‘must carry’ obligations towards pay-TV operator MultiChoice.

South Africa broadcasting regulator ICASA has admitted that its negotiations with DStv and SABC have reached an impasse.

SABC COO Ian Plaatjes has confirmed that the two organisations are deadlocked. “We will be going through an ICASA arbitration process [and] when the outcome of that occurs, we will know what the Rand value of that will be and will be able to share that information,” Plaatjes said.

The current rules require pay-TV operators to carry SABC’s channels. The rules regarding these obligations changed in April this year.

The dispute centres on the amount of advertising income which SABC earns because its channels are available on DStv.

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Tags: dstv, multichoice, SABC, south africa