The South African television service, launched in 1976, is among the youngest in Africa, but by far the most advanced on the continent. Propped by the country's large economy and high living standards among the minority populations, South Africa's television industry developed rapidly to become one of the first satellite-based broadcasting systems on the continent, with the most widely-received national service.

The industry is dominated by a state organization, the South African broadcasting Corporation (SABC), which was established in 1936 by an act of Parliament. The corporation however concentrated on radio broadcasting during its first 40 years of operation, as the racist National Party in power during most of this period, opposed the introduction of television under the pretext of preserving cultural sovereignty. The launching of the communication satellite Intelsat IV in 1972 by Western countries ushered in new fears about the dangers of uncontrolled reception of international television via cheap satellite dishes. The South African government, fearing imperialism swiftly resolved to introduce a national television service as an anti-imperial device.

Between 1976 and 1990, the SABC-TV service was state-controlled and heavily censored, and functioned as an arm of the government. SABC was banned from broadcasting pictures or voices of opposition figures and its editorial policy was dictated though an institutional censorship structure.

The blackout on politically-dissenting voices was discontinued in 1990 as the corporation purged itself of racial bias, and shifted its focus to public service broadcasting. Since then, SABC-TV has balanced its programs to reflect the country's cultural and political diversity and embraced a policy of affirmative action in staff recruitment.

At inception, SABC-TV operated four national television channels, namely TV-1, TV-2, TV-3, and TV-4. This configuration was however revised in a 1992 restructuring program which saw TV-1 retain its autonomy, while the rest were merged into a new national multicultural channel called Contemporary Community Values Television (CCV-TV). The two national channels now compete for audiences and advertising with M-Net, a highly successful private-owned pay channel.

TV-1, the largest and most influential, was directed at the minority but economically-advanced white population, with all programs broadcast in Afrikaans and English. Since mid-1986, the channel's 18-hour daily programming has been relayed through a transponder on an Intelsat satellite to 40 transmitting stations with an ERP of 100 Kw, and 42 stations with an ERP range of between 1Kw and 10Kw. These transmissions are augmented by 63 gap fillers and an estimated 400 private-owned low power transmitters, enabling the channel to be received by three quarters of the country's population.

The CCTV channel broadcasts in nine local languages via fourteen 100-Kw terrestrial stations, nine 1-10 Kw stations, and 33 gap fillers. The channel's programming is received by 64% of the country's population.

SABC's domination of radio and television has enabled it to develop advanced products and services for its audience. The corporation offers simulcasting of dubbed material on television with the original sound track on radio, Teledata, a teletext service initially established as a pilot project on spare TV-1 signal capacity, has been expanded to a 24-hour service with over 180 pages of news, information, and educational material. Selected material from the Teledata data-base is also copied onto TV-1 outside program transmission to provide an auxiliary service that is available on all TV sets countrywide.

The Electronic Media Network, widely known by its acronym, M-Net, is South Africa's only private television channel. Founded by a consortium of newspaper publishers in October 1986 to counter the growing threat that the commercially-driven SABC-TV posed to the newspaper industry, M-Net has grown into the most successful pay-TV station in the world outside the United States. Its nearly 850,000 subscribers (1995 estimates) receive 120 hours a week of entertainment, documentaries, film, series and miniseries. The large national audience is accessed through a number of leased or rented SABC terrestrial reception facilities.

The subscription service is offered on an internationally-patented decoder originally developed from the American Oak Systems decoder technology. M-Net's subscriber management subsidiary, Multichoice Ltd., not only markets the programming services to individual subscribers across Southern Africa. It also markets the Delta 9000 Plus decoders to pay-TV operations elsewhere; by 1994, it was marketing the technology to Pelepiu pay-TV system in Italy. Another of its subsidiaries, M-Net International, has been actively seeking subscribers in tropical and northern Africa after successful operations in Namibia, Lesotho and Swaziland. Through the use of two transponders on C-band satellites, the channel has a footprint covering the entire African continent and parts of the Middle East. During 1994, Multichoice Ltd. signed an agreement with a private TV station in Tanzania to relay programming across the country via satellite. At the same time, M-Net International began broadcasting across Africa on a channel shared with the BBC World Service Television. Plans were also afoot to extend re-broadcast rights to sub-Sahara African countries, and to expand satellite services and individual subscriptions.

Three small regional television stations are operated in the former homelands of Bophuthatswana, Transkei, and Ciskei. The Bophuthatswana television, Bop-TV, is a commercial operation that is aired via 18 small transmitters (all with ERP below 1 Kw), and relay stations in Johannesburg and Pretoria. The Transkei Broadcasting Corporation operates a television service which competes with the pay service of M-Net Transkei. M-Net Transkei is a scrambled service except between 3:00 P.M. and 5:00 P.M. when its signal is unscrambled. The Rhena Church of South Africa runs two private TV stations in Ciskei and Transkei, which broadcast in English via two small stations. Plans were underway in 1994 to install two 1 Kw transponders.

Since the early 1980s, South Africa has been considering venturing into satellite communications. The first involvement in satellite-aided broadcasting came in mid-1986 when a transponder was fitted on an Intelsat satellite to relay TV-1 to terrestrial transmitting stations. In early 1992, the C-band satellite service was upgraded from a hemispherical beam to a zonal beam to enhance the establishment of cellular transmitters in remote areas of the country. At the same time, the transmission standards were upgraded from B-MAC to PAL System 1. Together with the introduction of transmissions in the Ku-Band range, these modifications are expected to provide television coverage to the entire country. The Ku-Band satellite service is also expected to be utilized in telecommunication applications.

With over 150 production houses, South Africa has the largest broadcasting production industry on the continent. Local productions, from SABC teams and independent production houses, account for about 50% of airtime of SABC-TV and between 10 and 30% on M-Net. Both organizations have laid heavy emphasis on Afrikaans language productions. However, independent producers, brought together by the Film and Television Foundation (FTF), have in the past lobbied for higher local content quotas. However, such proposals have been contested by M-Net on the grounds that pay-TV service is customer-driven. The FTF suggests that where a broadcaster is unable to offer local content quotas, a levy should be introduced on the turnover to finance local productions.

-Nixon K. Kariithi