SECTOR 2 2.10 Private broadcasters deliver a minimum of quality public interest programmes Upon granting broadcasting licences, ICASA has a wide discretion for each broadcaster on the licence conditions, the type of content and the amount of local content that should be broadcast. While the body is meant to monitoring whether broadcasters are broadcasting what they said they would broadcast, this does not happen in reality due to ICASA being understaffed. The only broadcast licensee legally required to broadcast a particular percentage of public interest content is the SABC and, as a panellist noted, ‘even they are failing’. ‘While private broadcasters are obliged to broadcast local content, it is not the same as public interest programming and there is nothing legally binding in this regard.’ Mention was made of eNCA’s CheckPoint as providing ‘very good’ investigative current affairs programming, while DStv’s Carte Blanche was also noted as covering worthy public interest topics. During the country’s last elections, private broadcasters were seen as having done very well in covering a broad range of political parties, although they would have faced serious consequences in the form of penalties had they not done so, as this is one area in which ICASA does ensure fairness. ‘What is in the public interest and how do we measure the quality of this? We can’t assume there is one public because there are many publics in South Africa, each with different interests.’ ‘Private broadcasters are not selling advertisers their programmes, but they sell people – their viewers – in terms of LSMs [Living Standards Measures] to their advertisers.’ Scores: Individual scores: 1 Country does not meet indicator 2 Country meets only a few aspects of indicator 3 Country meets some aspects of indicator 4 Country meets most aspects of indicator 5 Country meets all aspects of the indicator Average score: 31 AFRICAN MEDIA BAROMETER SOUTH AFRICA 2018 ✓✓✓✓✓✓✓✓✓✓✓ 3.1 (2013: 2.8; 2010: n/a; 2008: n/a; 2006: n/a) ✓