by Thinus Ferreira

South Africa’s high court has ordered the country’s government and its department of communications and digital technologies to technically delay the country’s analogue television signal switch-off date from the end of March to the end of June 2022.

While the Pretoria High Court found that the government has done enough to help poor TV households get a free set-top box (STB), it also ruled that STBs for more than 507 000 households who have registered by 31 October 2021 to receive one, must be handed out and properly installed by 30 June 2022.

By the end of September another 261 000 households got STBs but millions of households still require a means to access DTT and risk losing their free TV access in the country and being wiped from the ratings system as households watching television. 

More than 8.25 million poor South Africans will be left without free-to-air television if analogue signals are terminated, with around half (4 million) of e.tv’s viewers falling in this group.

In South Africa’s long-delayed digital migration process to DTT, the government started switching off Sentech’s analogue transmitters since March 2021, with five provinces that have had their analogue signals cut, including the Free State, Northern Cape, North West province, Mpumalanga and Limpopo.

The Western Cape, Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal and the Eastern Cape have not yet lost their analogue signals and collectively comprise 68% of South Africa’s total population.

eMedia took the government to court saying the suddenly-rushed date of analogue switch-off of 31 March 2022 is not realistic and will damage free-to-air broadcast ratings in the country like its e.tv channel, with the SABC that eventually joined eMedia after its rating also started falling, in criticising the minister’s date decision.

The additional three months for digital migration from analogue to digital terrestrial television (DTT) is far short of what eMedia wanted.

The High Court in its judgment said “It is in the interest of the country, the economy and for South Africans in general that the digital migration be finalised”.

The High Court ordered e.tv to pay 50% of the minister of communications’ legal costs, and the full legal costs of Vodacom and the broadcasting regulator, the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa) who were two respondents in the court case.