South African Minister Solly Malatsi has secured cabinet support for extending the analogue TV switch-off deadline from December 31, 2024, to March 31, 2025. This move is intended to assist indigent households in accessing broadcast services.
Solly Malatsi said on Thursday that the deadline for analogue switch-off has been moved out once again – though this time by only another three months.
The broadcasting digital migration project, which is 14 years beyond the original deadline of December 2010 set by former communications minister Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri in President Thabo Mbeki’s administration, has proved an insurmountable task for a long list of communications ministers, all from the ANC.
“We have communicated this decision to the broadcasters and relevant stakeholders … and commit to continue working together with them on this project. Their commitment to ensuring that the free-to-air households migrate is critical to the success of this programme,” said Malatsi, who is clearly keen to avoid further litigation from commercial broadcasters that has bedevilled the process in the past.
He added that the project has “dragged on for far too long”, saying broadcasting in both analogue and digital is “costly and cannot be sustained indefinitely – more so at a time when the fiscus is under extreme pressure”.But he said 467 000 households that registered for government set-top boxes as part of a subsidy programme have not yet received them, and this needs to be addressed. He did not say why they had not yet been distributed.
“Our immediate focus between now and the end of March 2025 is to aggressively accelerate the delivery and installation of set-top boxes to indigent households to ensure that as many households as possible are prepared for the switch-off,” Malatsi said.that any migration from analogue to digital television that left a portion of the population behind would lead to an existential crisis for the SABC.
Analogue Switch-Off Digital Broadcast Migration South Africa Solly Malatsi Cabinet Approval
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