South Africans are increasingly turning to the SABC’s online services, including its YouTube channel and TikTok accounts, for the latest news, with these digital platforms all showing good growth last year.

According to the broadcaster’s annual report, published on Friday, the challenge for public broadcasters around the world is to identify their niche and deliver content that is not only relevant to their mandates, but that is also accessible through their audiences’ preferred technologies.

“While this trend presents significant opportunities for public broadcasters, it also poses the challenge of investing proactively in relevant technology and content, as well as identifying sustainable funding sources to support these investments,” the report said.

Board chairman Khathutshelo Ramukumba said this shift has prompted the SABC to position itself as a “public service media entity” rather than just a public broadcaster.

“This has ensured that the SABC remains relevant to important sectors of the South African population, including the youth, and that it expands its reach into the digital universe in line with the global shift of public broadcasters to public service media enterprises.”

Digital innovation was a core strategic focus last year. The SABC news website underwent a significant redesign, and despite some technical issues during high-traffic events, it recorded a 13% increase in pageviews during the final quarter. Audience interest was driven by real-time breaking news and feature stories, with international traffic notably from the US and Germany.

YouTube growth

On YouTube, the SABC News channel grew its total views by 26% year on year, reaching over 308 million. Subscriber numbers increased by 24%, rising to 2.85 million by the end of the reporting period.

The report said that in addition to the English-language channel, regional language YouTube channels also recorded strong growth. At least four channels exceeded two million views each, with aggregate lifetime views across all channels reaching 1.48 billion.

It said these figures compare favourably against competitors’ YouTube presence, including eNCA (965 million views), News24 (582 million) and EWN (262 million).

Read: SABC admits its funding model is broken

On social media, SABC News enjoyed growth across all major platforms. The SABC’s X account reached over three million followers in the final quarter of the period. Facebook followers grew by 30%, while TikTok followers soared by 73%, which the SABC said reflected its focus on younger audiences and “dynamic content formats”.

SABC Plus, the broadcaster’s streaming service, saw news content views rise from 1.8 million in the third quarter to 2.2 million in the fourth quarter.

Core objectives in the year included expanding multilingual digital content and enhancing podcast and video-on-demand offerings.

The SABC’s technology division said in the report that the media and broadcasting industry is witnessing dramatic changes.

In the current financial year, it will seek to launch direct-to-home (DTH) devices as part of its digital strategy. The aim is to deliver an integrated DTH solution to prevent audience and advertising revenue losses due to the switch-off of analogue terrestrial broadcasts, it said without elaborating in detail.