West Cape News

Yugendree Naidoo

South Africa’s fledgling community television movement is facing tough times as it struggles to secure finances due to recession and is indirectly knocked by the current funding fiasco around the SABC.

Both Cape Town and Johannesburg boast their own community television stations in the form of Cape Town Community Television (CTCT), started in 2008, and Soweto Community Television,which started in 2007.

The focus of community television channels is to highlight community concerns and provide opportunities for the development of local television talent.

Both CTCT and Soweto TV report that despite expanding and providing more programming their biggest challenge is maintaining and securing advertising.

In the case of Soweto TV, which has a viewership of 714,000, the financial woes of the SABC are expected to have an impact, said Marco Velosa, group sales and marketing manager at Urban Brew, which ploughs R500,000 a month into Soweto TV for studio costs.

Velosa said Soweto TV would suffer if Urban Brew was not paid for the programmes they produced for the SABC as Soweto TV could then be in a position where they would have to pay for studio space.

In addition, the economic downturn had “definitely” had an impact because it made it difficult to secure advertisers.

He said the station just managed to break even because it cost R500,000 a month for the studio and a further R280,000 for signal distributions.

“I am desperately trying to attract new advertisers and maintain current clients as the downturn in the economy has slowed down advertising over the last three months.”

He said although at the beginning of the year substantial growth had been expected this now seemed unlikely as it was hard to know what to expect for the rest of the year.

Down south, CCTV faces similar challenges, although the station officially launched a new in-house current affairs production on Thursday.

CCTV station manager Karen Thorne said the station had managed to survive the downturn in the economy by keeping costs to a minimum.

She said based on increased broadcasting times, viewership had increased. When the station started, it had broadcast for 30 minutes a week, but now broadcast 24 hours.

Thorne said they had received funding from the Western Cape provincial government for signal distribution, but still required additional funding from the private sector and advertisers.

Thorne said the station had initiated deals between independent production companies and the station in order to cut in-house production costs.

“However it’s been extremely difficult to secure funding as it usually is during the first year of airing because advertisers and sponsors are not willing to come on board if they don’t know the viewership numbers,” she said.

However, the station had recently appointed an advertising manager to bring in additional revenue to enable the station to produce in-house productions relevant to Cape Town communities. — West Cape News