Community television broadcaster Cape Town TV (CapeTV) feels under siege on two fronts, as the communications regulator has decided not to renew its temporary license and the national signal distributor is demanding R700 000 in arrears.
Karen Thorne, CapeTV's station manager, says: “We are now operating without a license, despite have received assurances that ICASA [Independent Communications Authority of SA] would renew it as they have for the past two years. And I am also waiting for Sentech to switch off our transmitter and take us off the air.”
CapeTV is a community TV service that broadcasts its signal to some 1.3 million viewers who are located in the greater Cape Town area that stretches from Atlantis in the west, to Grodon's Bay on the other side of False Bay. It generates revenue from a mix of advertising, grants and donations.
“We operate on R5 million a year - about the same amount as the SABC spends on throwing a party - yet we have to pay the same signal transmission rates as the commercial stations,” Thorne says.
She says that ICASA had assured her that CapeTV, like a similar community broadcaster, Soweto TV, which operates in Gauteng, would not have its annual license affected by the digital migration plan or the moratorium placed on issuing new TV licences.
“ICASA council members have assured us this would be the case, but now ICASA's licensing department is saying they will not renew our license,” she says.
Thorne also says that she has received legal opinion that ICASA has acted “ultra vires”, or outside the law, in refusing CapeTV its license.
“They have refused ours, but then gone and awarded brand new licenses despite their moratorium,” she says.
CapeTV has paid Sentech R700 000 for its signal transmission, but still owes it a similar amount.
“We have been paying it off as we are able to afford it. We were also led to believe by the Department of Communications that government would help community stations pay off their arrears. However, now they are saying they were only talking about community radio stations, but that is not why we had the meeting with them. It was about community TV stations,” Thorne says.
She says that, while she has copies of all correspondence that relates to the DOC's original statements saying that it would step in to pay some of the transmission costs, there has been no reply from Sentech if this has been done.
Thorne says that Sentech has only made available one 62KW transmitter that broadcasts a very weak signal.
The Department of Communications, Sentech and ICASA had not responded to ITWeb's queries at the time of publication.
Thorne says she is now going to approach various political parties to lobby for support.
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