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SABC wants to increase TV license fees by 5 percent

The idea of a TV license is not unique to South Africa with countries such as the UK, France and Germany all using a license to generate fees for public broadcasting.

At present, South African’s pay just R265 per year or 72 cents per day to have an active, valid TV license.

That fee may change, however, following a report by the SABC.

SABC board chairperson Bongumusa Makhathini says that the current license fee is not enough to sustain the broadcaster given the variety of platforms it broadcasts on.

As such the SABC has submitted a request to the minister of communications, Stella Ndabeni-Abrahams, to increase the TV license fee by five percent.

“South Africans are only paying about 72 cents a day for TV license. Considering what the SABC gives you which is 19 radio stations and five TV channels, our view is that we need to review the TV licence so that we can increase because it gives us quite a substantial amount of money,” said Makhathini.

Aside from the traditional media, SABC also hosts livestreams on YouTube and uploads content to that platform as well.

Should this application be successful the TV license fee would sit at R278.25 per annum.

All of this is good and well if South Africans paid their TV licenses. A report from Business Insider earlier this month revealed that of the 9.6 million TV license accounts, only 2.2 million are fully paid.

It appears then that even if the SABC were to successfully increase TV licenses, folks would likely be even less inclined to pay their account.

[Image – CC 0 Pixabay]

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