The big walk

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Screen Africa s technology expert, Ian Dormer, and advertising executive, Marianne Schafer, will be donning their most comfy shoes this week to take part in arguably the biggest walk in Amsterdam across 14 enormous halls at the RAI Exhibition Centre. IBC is one of the top two trade shows in the world devoted to the latest electronic media and entertainment technology used in the production, management and distribution of content.

The thing about IBC is that it s just so exciting because you really feel part of the global industry, hobnobbing with more than 50,000 people from all over the world. Screen Africa is one of the international trade magazines that proudly resides in Magazine Alley at the show.

Ian will be reporting from the IBC Conference sessions while simultaneously being on the look-out for mind-boggling new technology. Marianne will be meeting with our advertisers and marketing Screen Africa to IBC at large.

Each year a whole troupe of South Africa s leading equipment suppliers and system integrators make the trek to IBC so that they can offer the best technological solutions to their local and African markets.

Ian and Marianne are lucky, not only because they are attending this mega industry event, but because they can walk away, if only for a few days, from the latest drama to befall the South African television industry. Following hot on the heels of the complete-opposite-of-impressive launch of the ANN724-hour news channel, comes the news that, according to the 2011/2012 Annual Report of public broadcaster SABC, there is a huge mystery around what they spent an amount of R1.58bn on. There is no supporting documentation about this humongous expenditure, as was revealed when the SABC Annual Report was tabled at parliament yesterday.

Once the news broke, the SABC rapidly scheduled a press conference for this afternoon about the Annual Report and to address incorrect information in the public domain in this regard . Then this morning the SABC re-scheduled the press conference for tomorrow.

In the meantime, what is currently in the public domain is that the SABC received a Disclaimer of Opinion from the Auditor General (AG) for the 2012/13 financial year, which is way worse than the qualified audit they received for the previous financial year. The AG also found that the financial statements submitted did not adhere to reporting standards, the Public Finance Management Act (PFMA) or the Companies Act. There is also the matter of irregular expenditure in the amount of R106.3m.

So, I am really keen to hear what the SABC has to say in their press conference tomorrow

Joanna Sterkowicz

LINK:	http://www.screenafrica.com/page/news/editors-comments/1634197-The-big...
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