The South African Broadcasting Corporation SABC has not yet submitted a request to increase the TV licence fee - and the process is likely to take a while before a request is approved.
The state-owned broadcaster faces a R7.3 billion revenue shortfall to fund its public mandate over the medium term.
SABC , from a commercial perspective, takes commercial revenue to fund the public mandate. Thats our current model. 55 of our mandate costs are funded and they are funded by declining TV licence fees, CEO Nomsa Chabeli told Parliament earlier this month.
Less than 20 of South African households who should be paying for TV licences do so. Furthermore, 83 of SABCs revenue comes from commercial activities, while only 13 comes from TV licences.
The price of a TV licence has not changed in a very, very long time. So, from an inflation perspective, you can imagine that the price has actually, in real cost, reduced over a period of time, Chabeli added.
No request for SABC TV licence fee increaseChabelis comments sparked speculation that SABC may soon request approval from the Department of Communications and Digital Technologies DCDT to increase the TV licence fee. Fortunately for cash-strapped consumers, this has not yet happened.
At this stage, the SABC can confirm that there is no request made for an increase of the TV licence fee," the broadcasters head of communications Mmoni Ngubane told MyBroadband .
"The process for an amendment of a TV license fee is a legislative process that requires multi-stakeholder involvement.
"However, the SABC is looking forward to a more effective licence regime, if any, that is relevant to the current and future audio-visual services offered by the SABC as a public broadcaster.
The SABC suffered a staggering R700 million loss in the 2023/2024 financial year, according to its management and board.