Experts in South Africa’s broadcasting sector are calling on government to admit its failures and cut its losses regarding the botched migration to digital terrestrial television (DTT).

Initiated two decades ago, DTT was meant to serve as the primary broadcasting medium for free-to-air television services, including those of the SABC and e.tv as well as local and regional community TV stations. MultiChoice Group also had plans to launch GOtv, its subscription terrestrial offering that is offers elsewhere in Africa, in South Africa.

The idea was to shift South African broadcasters away from older analogue technology to digital transmissions, which are cheaper to operate and make more efficient use of scarce radio frequency spectrum, allowing broadcasters to offer more channels at higher definition.

The move would also free up valuable “digital dividend” spectrum that mobile operators could then use to provide broadband services, a milestone achieved in August 2023 when broadcasters moved their signals to frequencies below 694MHz.

But with the deadline for broadcasters to switch off their analogue transmissions less than a month away, some 4.5 million South Africans are at risk of being cut off from access to television because they do not have the set-top boxes required to decode digital signals.

“One of the things standing in the way of a solution is the acceptance and realisation that the DTT project has failed. There probably are many hundreds or thousands of homes who do have DTT, but no audited numbers of actual active households with DTT boxes exist,” said Michael Markovitz, director of the Gibs Media Leadership Think Tank. “Maybe the solution for government is to forget about DTT and move everyone over to satellite.”

Set-top boxes

One of the major issues hampering the migration to digital broadcasts in South Africa is government’s failure to distribute set-top boxes to qualifying “indigent” households. TechCentral in January reported that state-owned signal distributor Sentech, tasked with the installation of these set-top boxes, had to distribute 220 000 boxes to qualifying households across the country before the 31 March deadline.

Around 467 000 households originally registered for the subsidy programme. Installers working on the project told TechCentral there was “no way” the project would meet the 31 March deadline set by communications minister Solly Malatsi and complete the second half of work whose first half took more than a decade to do. One of the installers said the “situation on the ground is a mess” and allegations of corruption, maladministration and general incompetence are said to have undermined the project’s success.

Read: E.tv drags Solly Malatsi to court over March digital TV deadline

But even if the less than 500 000 set-top boxes meant for indigent households were successfully distributed to them, there is still an estimated shortfall of some four million households that will still suffer from being cut off from analogue broadcasts.

Karen Thorne, station manager at community broadcaster Cape Town TV, described these households as the “missing middle”. These are homes that don’t necessarily fit government’s definition of “indigent” but also can’t afford to buy a smart TV or set-top box to access digital broadcasts.

According to Thorne, DTT can still be made to work if stakeholders – including the media, government and regulators – come together and agree on a practical way forward. She said one of the major issues with government’s approach is that input from media stakeholders has largely been ignored, with government “solutions” forced on the industry in a top-down fashion.

“The future of DTT needs to be discussed; we need to come to a clear consensus between the broadcasters and regulators. We as broadcasters don’t know what the impact of losing 40% of our audience is going to be. We are already vulnerable as it is and cannot afford to lose any more advertising revenue,” she said.

The threat of losses in revenue due to audience shrinkage and a subsequent decrease in ad spend is a threat faced by all free-to-air broadcasters, but none more so than the SABC.

The public broadcaster faces an existential crisis with its funding model central to a fractious political battle between Malatsi, a Democratic Alliance MP, and his ANC counterparts. The minister withdrew the controversial SABC Bill from parliament in November, citing issues with its funding model his primary reason for doing so. Around 80% of the SABC’s revenues come from advertising.

Thorne’s view that DTT can still be made to work in South Africa represents one school of thought. Markovitz’s argument, on the other hand, that DTT should be replaced by satellite makes sense for several reasons.

For one, DTT is now a “sunset technology”. While it was cutting edge at the time the project was first proposed, technology has advanced so rapidly in the intervening two decades that IPTV and 5G broadcasts have come to the fore, threatening to make DTT redundant.

Secondly, satellite provides similar benefits to DTT without some of its drawbacks. Around 12 million South African households already have access to satellite. And since the medium does not require any terrestrial signal distribution towers, it is cheaper for broadcasters, meaning their businesses are likely to be more sustainable.

State subsidy

However, moving 4.5 million households to satellite will still require some kind of state subsidy and administrative process that could fall prey to the same snags that crippled the set-top box distribution project. But Markovitz argued the revenue losses to the SABC, e.tv and community radio stations represent an even higher cost that government must consider.

E.tv in January filed papers at the high court in Pretoria against Malatsi. The free-to-air broadcaster, along with media watchdogs Media Monitoring Africa and the SOS Coalition, are seeking an urgent interdict to prevent the minister from switching off analogue broadcasts on 31 March.

Read: DTT has failed in South Africa – now scrap it, says eMedia

This is not the first time e.tv has taken a communications minister to court on analogue switch-off. The constitutional court in 2022 ruled in favour of e.tv and others, finding that former communications minister Khumbudzo Ntshavheni had failed to consult with industry stakeholders including e.tv, Media Monitoring Africa and others before deciding to set a date for switch-off. E.tv owner eMedia has accused Malatsi of making the same mistake as his predecessor.

“We’ve seen five of the smaller provinces switched off and that immediately caused massive audience losses for the SABC. What more when the four largest provinces are switched off? It is quite clear that millions of households will be left behind and we haven’t heard yet what happens to them when their screens show snowy pictures on the day of the switch-off,” said Markovitz. – © 2025 NewsCentral Media