South Africa's Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA) is to start hearing applications in February for a licence to run a new free-to-air commercial television channel. Media analysts say the new service, which will cost between 80 and 100 million dollars to set up, will generate the largest media investment in the country's history. Seven consortiums, most of them backed by international broadcasting groups, have submitted bids to run the channel. Peter Feuilherade of BBC Monitoring's Foreign Media Unit reports:

Two South African ventures - the MultiChoice digital pay-TV platform and the M-Net pay-TV channel - already operate successfully across Africa.

But in South Africa itself, the continent's wealthiest country, no large-scale private TV broadcaster has been set up since the launch of M-Net in 1986.

That is likely to change with the setting up of the new free-to-air TV channel, at an estimated cost of 80-100 million dollars.

Seven consortiums, most of them backed by international media groups, had submitted bids to the IBA by the September 1997 deadline.

Two of the bidders - Community Television Network and Free to Air TV - are backed by News Corporation owner Rupert Murdoch.

Another media magnate, Australia's Kerry Packer, is backing the Station for the Nation bid, and the US-based media giant Time Warner confirmed last week that it would invest 20 million dollars in the planned channel if its local partner, Midi TV, wins.

Another contender, New Channel, is backed by French media interests.

The foreign partners are restricted to a 20-per-cent share, and all the bids include complex shareholding structures to ensure that black South African interests have a substantial stake in the winning channel.

In November 1996, when the IBA first proposed creating a new private TV channel, it recommended that "the inclusion of historically disadvantaged groups in ownership and control structures" should play an important part in the selection process.

The IBA also specified that the new channel should provide "a full range of informative, entertaining and educational programming, 30 per cent of which should be local".

It would have to reach 70 per cent of all South Africans within three years of going on air, and its advertising would be restricted to 10 minutes an hour during prime time.

In its 1996 draft policy document, the IBA predicted that by the year 2000, the market would generate an additional 140 million dollars, giving the new national channel room to operate without taking away advertising revenue from either the state-run SABC or the commercial M-Net venture.

The new channel should offer diversity and choice and be a strong competitor to the SABC and M-Net, while not threatening the viability of either, the IBA proposed.

But it announced that it would review M-Net's licence conditions in order to "level the playing field". M-Net, the IBA pointed out, drew a sizeable amount of advertising revenue from its daily two-hour free-to-air slot, yet had no public service obligations during that time.

M-Net vowed to resist attempts to phase out its free-to-air slot broadcasts, and objected to what it said were the IBA's attempts to impose public service obligations on the new private TV channel.

M-Net said the IBA proposals "constitute undue interference in the commercial activities of the licensees, and it is our strong contention that they will adversely affect the viability of existing and potential private television broadcasters".

The SABC has also been preparing itself to compete with the new free-to-air commercial TV channel.

In terms of government proposals still under discussion, it faces losing one, and maybe even two, of its three TV channels.

In 1997, the corporation's efforts to improve its audience ratings, adopt a more commercial approach and generate extra revenue paid off as income from television advertising rose by 30 per cent.

For viewers, this has brought more entertainment-based programmes and less news and current affairs. Or as a writer in the 'Weekly Mail and Guardian' put it, 1997 "may have been a better year for the SABC, but it's been a bleak year for public broadcasting".

BBC Monitoring(http://www.monitor.bbc.co.uk), based in Caversham in southern England, selects and translates information from radio, television, press, news agencies and the Internet from 150 countries in more than 70 languages.
 

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