Namibia
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
African Media Barometer - Namibia 2007

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