SABC Plus: Broadcaster enters streaming age with new app

Nineteen SABC radio stations and five television channels will be available on the public broadcaster’s new streaming service.

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Cyril Ramaphosa finally named the new board of directors for the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) on Tuesday, 18 April Image: Storm Simpson.

The South African Broadcasting Company (SABC) has launched a new streaming platform and app that will allow the public to access radio and television stations on multiple devices.

SABC LAUNCHES STREAMING APP

Nineteen radio stations and SABC 1, 2, 3, SABC Sport, and the SABC News 24-hour channel will be available on the SABC Plus streaming app.

“This is a great milestone for the SABC and it’s also very great for our audiences. It’s a very interactive platform and they can use it in a manner that can be able to view all our content whether you are talking radio, television, drama and all the great content that we have,” said Group CEO, Madoda Mxakwe.

Mxakwe said with the launch of the Over-the-top (OTT) media service platform, the public broadcaster is officially becoming a multi-platform, multi-device content provider.

He said by entering the streaming game, the SABC was adding the missing piece to its distribution strategy.

“And it’s also going to give clients and customers an advantage in the sense that, now we are able to ensure that they can monetise, and we can actually grow audiences, which is linked to revenue generation for the SABC,” said the CEO.

In the Draft White Paper on Audio and Audio-Visual Content Services Policy Framework: A New Vision for South Africa 2020, which called for a broader definition and collection method for license fees, the broadcaster and the department of communications toyed with the idea of members of the public paying TV licence fees for laptops, tablets, DStv decoders and Netflix subscriptions.

According to BusinessTech, the TV licence fee evasion rate is 81.7% in 2022 – which means approximately 8.6 million licence holders are holding out.

Earlier in 2022, the SABC proposed replacing the current licence system with a ‘public media levy’, which would apply to all households and businesses regardless of the device used. The levy would have to be paid if South Africans can access the content on any device even if it is not consumed.

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