The history of television in South Africa is a complex and fascinating one, marked by political considerations, technological advancements, and the country's unique social landscape. From early experiments to the introduction of digital services and the rise of streaming platforms, television has played a significant role in shaping South African society.
SABC offices in Durban
Early Experiments and Initial Resistance
On 7 September 1928, The Star reported on the arrival of the first television experiments in South Africa. The service would start in Johannesburg by the end of the year and would subsequently expand to other South African cities over time. The first demonstration took place on 22 August 1929, being limited to members of the South African Association for the Advancement of Science (SAAAS) at the engineering laboratory of the South African College in Cape Town. Initial pictures were of poor quality and plagued by interference.
A second test was conducted at the Empire Exhibition in Johannesburg in 1936. In 1952, Naudé stated that South Africa was interested in developing its own television service in the future. Moreover, as the 1950s progressed, the SABC faced increasing financial difficulties. Its budget was strained by the purchase of additional land for its Auckland Park facilities, the expansion of Bantu radio services, and loans to install FM transmitters and services.
Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd compared television to atomic bombs and poison gas, stating, "They are modern things, but that does not mean they are desirable. However, many White South Africans, including some Afrikaners, did not share Hertzog's hostility towards what he called "the little black box."
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On the other hand, the South African government had been producing filmed content for television broadcasters as far ahead as the late-1950s. These films featured news, interviews, and documentary segments and were viewed by millions of people, with production costs amounting to thousands of rand. When Neil Armstrong became the first man to set foot on the Moon in 1969, South Africa was one of the few countries unable to watch the event broadcast live.
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The Introduction of Television in 1976
In 1971, the SABC was finally allowed to introduce a television service. In common with most of Western Europe, South Africa used the PAL system for colour television, becoming only the second terrestrial television service in sub-Saharan Africa to launch with a colour-only service.
South Africa’s first official television broadcast was aired 49 years ago, on 5 January 1976, many years behind the rest of the world and even trailing many African countries. Some of the first locally produced shows in the 1970s included English-language family drama series The Dingleys and The Villagers, as well as comedy series Biltong and Potroast and variety programme The Knicky Knacky Knoo Show. For the first six years of television in South Africa, only one channel - TV1 - was available, which split content evenly between English and Afrikaans.
Transnational VoD Cultures
In the absence of television in South Africa, a radio adaptation of the British television series The Avengers was produced by Sonovision for the SABC's commercial network, Springbok Radio, in 1972.
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Expansion and Competition
In 1981, a second channel was introduced, broadcasting in African languages such as Zulu, Xhosa, Sotho and Tswana. The main channel, then called TV1, was divided evenly between English and Afrikaans. In 1986, the SABC's monopoly was challenged by the launch of a subscription-based service known as M-Net, backed by a consortium of newspaper publishers.
However, as part of M-Net’s licensing restrictions, it could not broadcast news programmes, which remained the preserve of the SABC. In 1992, TV2, TV3, and TV4 were combined into a new service called CCV (Contemporary Community Values). A third channel, known as TSS (Topsport Surplus Sport), was introduced, with Topsport being the brand name for the SABC's sports coverage.
Following the easing of media censorship under State President F. W. de Klerk, the SABC's news coverage moved towards being more objective. The launch of PanAmSat's PAS-4 satellite saw the introduction of Ku band direct-broadcast satellite broadcasting services on 2 October 1995, soon after MultiChoice launched DStv.
The SABC's monopoly on free-to-air terrestrial television was broken with the introduction of the privately owned channel e.tv in 1998. The first 24-hour local business channel, CNBC Africa, was launched in 2007 with eight hours of local programming, with the remainder pulled from other CNBC affiliates.
Community Television
Another model of public service television, known as community television, was introduced to South Africa in the early 1990s. The impetus for this form of television arose from a desire to overcome the divisions and imbalances in broadcasting resulting from apartheid.
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While many community radio stations sprang up from that time, community television was initially only permitted for temporary event licences of up to four weeks in duration. The first community television station to receive a one-year licence was Soweto TV in 2007. The station serves the southern Johannesburg region, primarily Soweto, and is also available by satellite on the MultiChoice platform. The second community television licence was granted to Cape Town TV, which was first licensed in 2008.
In addition to the above-mentioned services, a channel called Bay TV (now known as Mpuma Kapa TV and available only on DStv) started in Port Elizabeth, Tshwane TV in Pretoria, and 1KZN TV in Richards Bay. All of these channels held seven-year 'class' licences. In 2014, these channels collectively reached an audience of around 12 million viewers, and all are carried both terrestrially on local analogue frequencies as well as nationally on pay-TV platforms, principally DStv.
Digital Migration
The first digital television implementation in South Africa was a satellite-based system launched by pay-TV operator MultiChoice in 1995. On 11 August 2008, the Department of Communications announced its Broadcasting Digital Migration Policy. The government had a goal to have digital television, as well as mobile television, up and running in time for the South Africa-hosted 2010 FIFA World Cup.
In May 2010, On Digital Media launched the TopTV satellite television service. It offers a number of South African and international television channels and broadcasts principally in English, but also in Hindi, Portuguese, and Afrikaans.
Impact and Influence
The fact that television in South Africa has always been transnational means that our ideas about the world and about ourselves have been influenced by what we have seen from around the world. In the South African context this becomes an identity conundrum as white people were more likely to have TV sets, while Black people less so, and because shows were produced and bought to entertain and inform some of the population in English, while others were unable to understand these shows.
The drama series Shaka Zulu, based on the true story of the Zulu warrior King Shaka, was shown around the world in the 1980s. Since the end of apartheid, some South African-produced programmes have been shown internationally, such as SABC 3's sci-fi/drama series Charlie Jade, a co-production between the Imaginarium and Canada's CHUM.
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