The South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) released its annual revenue report this month before parliament, and you would be surprised to learn how much money the parastatal made.
According to the report, the SABC earned R815.1 million for the year 2022 from TV licences.
To many this would be a surprise, as many South Africans ignore their annual TV licence payments.
In a statement the SABC said 2021/2022 was somewhat of a good financial year. “The SABC’s net loss improved by R329 million (62%) compared to 2020/21, resulting in a R543 million (73%) improvement in net loss over five years (2018 – 2022). Revenue grew by R90m (2%) year-on-year as a result of the marginal increase in sponsorship revenue,” it said.
“Despite the revenue increase in 2021/22, revenue levels previously achieved in 2020 have yet to be realised primarily due to audience share decline. As a result, advertising revenue was significantly under budget by 23%. Revenue is projected to grow in 2022/23 and several initiatives are in progress to mitigating the risk”
TV LICENCES
While TV licence fees brought in R815.1 million in revenue, this was still far below the R4.4 billion that was billed to the South African public.
The report said, “during the year TV licences amounting to R4.446 billion were billed of which only R815.0 met the probability recognition criteria.”
According to the SABC, this means that the company was only able to get 18.3% of the total licence fees that it is owed. This translated to an evasion rate of 81.7% in 2021/2022.
It should also be noted that the report added in “the period under review, 1.9m (2021: 2.2 million) licence holders managed to settle their television licence fees in full or in part against a known database of 10.5m television licence holders. The licence fee collection rates indicate an evasion rate of 81.7%”
THE PUBLIC MEDIA LEVY
In an effort to try and address this huge evasion rate the SABC earlier this year proposed a new solution.
The company called it a public media levy and said it would be a compulsory new tax.
The so-called new tax will be paid by all households and businesses.
In March SABC chairperson Bongumusa Makhathini said "the replacement of the current TV licence regime with what we call a public media levy which also has a component where the major subscription players can also assist with the collection of that public media levy".
"That's very important because it's still one of our major streams of revenue at the SABC, the first one, of course, being commercial activities – sponsorship, advertising and then immediately after that is the SABC TV licence which we want to change to be a public media levy,“ Makhathini added.
SUCH A WASTE
In its annual report, the national broadcaster also noted that it incurred R2.8 billion in irregular, fruitless and wasteful expenditure, with a net loss of R201million.
WHAT WOULD YOU DO
Do you pay for your TV licence?
— Business Report (@busrep) October 20, 2022
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