Officially, on March 31st, South Africa is obliged to switch-off its analogue TV transmissions. However, a High Court hearing in Pretoria suggests that – again – the switch-off could be delayed.

The actual analogue switch-off date was originally set for December 31st 2006, in accordance with ITU rulings, and, while high-power transmissions were curbed in some areas of the nation in June 2009, there were plenty of regions where analogue broadcasting continued.

These latest High Court hearings follow on from submissions made by e.TV which has asked for the date to be reviewed and amended. The argument is that if the decision to set the switch-off deadline is not set aside, it will sever millions of South Africans from access to television.

One of the arguments is that the switch-off date has ignored a commitment made by government that the introduction of digital transmissions would be made available to all households by the switch-off date. This has not happened.

Local advocacy group Media Monitoring Africa and nits Director, William Bird, explained the adverse impact that would follow during the previous extension of the deadline to March 2025 following a decade of extensions, saying: “This is about an ongoing and collective inability to make sure that the poor and indigents actually have access to television. What we know is that 28.5 per cent of South African audiences still rely exclusively on free-to-air services in order to access television, so had they gone ahead with this decision, you would have that entire group of people (4.5 million households) would be cut off from television completely. That would have been completely unacceptable because of course these are the poorest of the poor.”

Public broadcaster SABC’s Group CEO Nomsa Chabeli has already warned that this transition will cut off 4 million households without access to satellite platforms or set-top boxes which will severely impact the public broadcaster’s sustainability.

e.TV, in its submission, said: “Government failed to consult on the ASO (analogue switch-off) date before deciding to set 31 March 2025 as the date,”

e.tv, in its heads of arguments to the court, added: “On 28 November 2024, the minister informed stakeholders that the previous ASO date of 31 December 2024 would not be extended. On 5 December 2025, the minister told stakeholders that the deadline was now 31 March 2025. There was no consultation in between. Stakeholders were never advised that government was considering an extension to 31 March nor were they asked to comment on whether 31 March was a viable and reasonable date before a final decision was taken.”

e.tv’s other arguments rest on the premise that government has failed to prepare the public adequately for the migration to digital broadcasts. Marcus told the court that the rate of set-top-box installations – a project run by transmission company Sentech and the Universal Service & Access Agency of South Africa – was too slow and had not reached the point where enough installations had been done to justify switching off analogue broadcasts.

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Categories: Articles, Broadcast, DSO

Tags: aso, dso, south africa