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African Television Market presents tele-dialogue on digital migration --
Sat, 18 Jun 2016 16:37
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SCREEN AFRICA EXCLUSIVE: The African Television Market, held annually at Durban FilmMart to celebrate and help develop African television content, hosted a discussion on Saturday 18 June with the purpose of helping content producers to better understand how digital terrestrial television will affect the content creation industry.
Programme director Nobuntu Webster explained that a similar discussion held the previous year had focused on the scientific and technological details of digital migration what the process would entail and how it would be rolled out. The purpose of the present dialogue, on the other hand, would be to explain to content creators what opportunities will arise from DTT, to answer the question Exactly what does it mean to me as a producer?
Nompumelelo Fisher, director of the Broadcast Digital Migration project at South Africa s Department of Communications (DOC), took to the stand to explain the ins and outs of what continues to be a rather vague and fraught topic, in light of the constant legislative delays that have plagued the migration process over the past few years.
At its simplest, the primary benefit of digital migration is that it will free up bandwidth. This is good news, not only for the television industry but for others within the communications world as well. It will increase the amount of bandwidth available for cellular and broadband services, in addition to exponentially increasing the number of television channels that can be broadcast in the region.
Fisher explained how, despite all the delays experienced in the past few years, the migration process is now underway. The government-subsidised set-top boxes were launched in September last year, with the Northern Cape being far advanced in the uptake of the devices. The first complete analogue switch-off in the country is set to happen shortly in the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) region at Carnarvon in the Karoo. The message seemed to be that, while it has been a long time coming, digital migration is finally underway.
For those in the television industry, the biggest benefit is of course that a greater spectrum will mean more channels, which will mean increased demand for content. As Fisher explained: The SABC currently has five channels in total. After digital migration, there will be potential for around 140. How will we fill those channels?
Unfortunately the DOC has little to say when it comes to exactly how this enormous potential will be translated into real content creation opportunities for producers, writers and directors and thus a boost in employment for the industry at large. That falls under the purview of the SABC, which has seemingly shown its intention to boost its local content acquisition with its recent introduction of a 90 percent quota. The details of how this would play out could not be gleaned from Fisher s talk. For that, DFM delegates will have to wait until Monday 20 June, the final day of the market, when SABC COO Hlaudi Motsoeneng is set to be in Durban to address that very pressing issue.
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