and distributed countrywide. It has made an impact on the newspaper-reading public with its investigative and sensationalist stories. There are seven commercial radio stations and four community radio stations (four in Windhoek and one in Rehoboth), an increase from the combined total of nine commercial and community stations in 2005. The national broadcaster, the NBC, has nine local language radio services, as well as an English national radio station. Interestingly, Radio 99 was sold to Democratic Media Holdings (DMH), owners of the Afrikaans daily Die Republikein and the German Allgemeine Zeitung, and in February 2007 South Africa’s leading publishing group News24 took a 50 per cent stake in DMH. There are three local television stations: the public/state-run NBC, the commercial One Africa Television and the community television station which broadcasts local and foreign religious programming, Trinity Broadcasting Namibia (TBN). Notably in terms of diversity, One Africa launched a daily (Monday-Friday) news bulletin at 19h30, potentially providing a good alternative to the NBC’s 20h00 news bulletin. There is much diversity in terms of foreign news broadcasts on the free-to-air local channels: One Africa broadcasts a few hours a day of BBC World and BBC News, while the NBC broadcasts CNN, Deutsche Welle and CCTV. The satellite television service, DSTV, is too expensive for most Namibians at a rate of N$480 a month. A new development is the sale of free-to-air satellite decoders, requiring a one-off payment of about N$900 and a satellite dish. These decoders allow viewers to receive the South African television channels SABC1, 2 and 3, etv, Botswana’s national television (BTV) as well as numerous religious channels. While many local radio stations rely on the NBC infrastructure to broadcast their signal, numerous obstacles were placed in the way of One Africa by the NBC to prevent the private television station from broadcasting. In parts of Windhoek and in Oshakati the NBC refused to allow One Africa to use its transmitters, meaning that One Africa had to erect its own at great cost. “Surely this is public infrastructure and should be shared by all television services in Namibia? It is worrying that NBC sees One Africa as some sort of competition.” Concern was raised that despite the many changes in the media landscape, there has not been a new and objective survey since the seven-year-old Namibian All Media Product Survey (NAMPS). According to this survey, commissioned by the NBC, there are approximately 10 readers per copy of The Namibian, and seven to eight for the other newspapers. It is worth noting that during 2006, The Namibian and the Trustco Group (publishers of Informanté) jointly launched a new printing company called Free Press Printers. Although the company has experienced extreme technical difficulties with the press, which has resulted in The Namibian being late on the streets a number of times, this could be a positive development in light of the long-term dominance of the printing sector by Newsprint Namibia, owned by DMH, and John Meinert Printing. While in urban areas there is a relatively wide choice of media, including imported newspapers and magazines, in rural areas access to the media is severely limited, both in terms of availability and affordability. In some areas there is no access to print media or the Internet, and the NBC is people’s only source of information. Access to the media is also limited by the fact that most publications are published in English. Newspapers cost more than N$3 each, which So This Is Democracy? 2007 -199- Media Institute of Southern Africa