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The South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) began testing its digital streaming platform on Tuesday, 1 March 2022, and it is expected to go live in the third quarter of the current financial year.
This is according to SABC COO Ian Plaatjes, who explained that the broadcaster had observed a decline in audience, primarily due to the global trend to shift to digital platforms.
“The decline in audience is multi-causational. The global trend that there is, there is not much we can do about that,” Plaatjes said during the SABC’s report to Parliament’s Standing Committee on Public Accounts.
“I think the big one for us is not so much an audience loss, but an audience migration to digital.”
“Right now, we do not have our own digital platform,” Plaatjes added.
The SABC first announced that it was planning on launching an over-the-top (OTT) platform in October 2020. Dubbed SABC iPlayer, the broadcaster intends its streaming service to compete against players like Netflix and Spotify.
According to Plaatjes, it should launch in the current financial year.
“We have gone to market. We are in the final stages of assessing the responses of that, and we will have our own OTT platform in the market by the third quarter of the current financial year,” Plaatjes said.
The SABC began its pilot phase of testing on 1 March 2022.
“We started testing yesterday the software that will enable us to actually commercialise the OTT platform,” Plaatjes said.
“Not just our own, but third-party platforms as well that we are using. We will be using it as a pilot phase for this month, and we will go live from next month.”
South Africans can also expect new channels from the broadcaster this year.
“What that means is, we are going to be launching additional channels within the new financial year,” Plaatjes stated
“But we are also changing the process of acquiring content for our channels. We are optimising that.”
“It’s a big game-changer,” he added
Plaatjes explained that the new channels would also be available on SABC’s online streaming platform.
“You will see a lot more compelling content coming through on our existing platform, but also the new channels that we are going to be launching that will also be available on our OTT platform,” he said.
“We will be aggressively playing in the digital space,” he added.
Plaatjes explained that another aspect that could impact the SABC’s audience was digital migration.
However, he added that it was working with the Department of Communications and Digital Technologies to manage the impacts of the analogue switch-off.