Accumulation by symbolic dispossession: the Digital Terrestrial Television transition in South Africa

Introduction

Policymakers have promised the world when it came to the migration from analogue to Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT) broadcasting (Freedman, 2008; Galperin, 2005), and South Africa has been no exception to this general rule. In an attempt to chart a way as an early adopter of technological innovations in the global South (especially in Africa), the South African government established a Digital Broadcasting Migration Working Group in 2005 to advise on the process, which eventually led to a national policy document in 2008 (Department of Communications, 2008). From the start, the government was convinced that the digital switchover should not be left to the vagaries of market forces. They wanted a transition that was markedly different from a country like Canada, which allowed market forces to dictate the pace and manner of the DTT transition, and which did not necessarily lead to a more efficient broadcasting system or a greater selection of content (Taylor, 2010, 2013).

The South African government maintained that if they allowed market forces to prevail, then there was a risk that the purported benefits of the migration process would not be generalised across society (Department of Communications, 2008). Furthermore, they recognised that free-to-air television risked being marginalised by subscription television, and a public policy-led DTT transition was needed to give the former a fighting chance. If free-to-air television was marginalised, then media systems risked being balkanised along income lines, with those who could afford subscription television migrating to it, while poorer viewers being left to rely on free-air-services. Common viewing spaces could diminish, limiting television’s ability to play public sphere functions and provide platforms for important societal debates (Curran, 1991: 105–108). Such outcomes became visible in a country like Ireland, where free-to-air television focusing on social and cultural concerns became ghettoised as under-funded ‘poor person’s television’ by a commercially rampant subscription television sector (Murphy, 2012: 75–86).

Governments such as South Africa’s, that intervened to promote policy and regulation in the public interest, have focussed on specific areas of the migration process, such as fair access to digital frequencies and specifying standards for the set top box used to decode the digital signal to ensure digital inclusion South Africa even went beyond regulating specific areas of the transition and set itself grand ambitions that extended into social engineering (such as promoting social cohesion and reducing poverty and unemployment) (Department of Communications, 2008: 9). Media diversity was a central objective of the migration process, too (Department of Communications, 2008: 11).

It seems fair to say that, in reality, the digital transition in South Africa is a shadow of what it was meant to be. The country has overshot the International Telecommunications Union deadline of mid-2015, and there is little clarity about when the process will be completed by. Using a critical political economy perspective, this article focusses in particular on one aspect of the DTT transition, namely, whether it is actually creating more media diversity. More specifically, it looks at the contribution communications regulation has made to realising this most significant promise of all, as the regulator (the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa or ICASA) is meant to operationalise national policy.

In the public interest? Theorising regulation

Communications regulators often claim to operate in the public interest (Horwitz, 1989, 1997). However, this claim gives regulators a progressive gloss they may not actually deserve. Public interest theory posits that regulation is needed to protect relatively powerless members of the public from commercial interests. This theory has largely assumed the status of ‘common-sense’ in public discourse, but it is based on the politically questionable assumption of a neutral state, existing to create rules to serve the public as a whole. Regulatory failure or perverted public interest theory proceed from similar assumptions, where regulators have fundamentally good intentions that they may have been led astray from. This worldview cannot conceive of the possibility that, rather than being set up to protect the public interest, regulators could function to protect commercial interests from the public interest; in other words, regulation may well be a device to transfer income from poorer social groups to wealthier ones (Horwitz, 1989, 1997).

However, while the public interest could also be seen as a palliative, or as a means of giving communications regulators a veneer of public acceptability and accountability, it would be unwise to jettison the term entirely. Communications regulation is an important site of struggle over how communications goods are distributed in society; furthermore, the public interest is an important concept to defend, as in the neoliberal phase of capitalism, even this palliative risks being marginalised in favour of market-driven communications (Freedman, 2008). This shift is having a profound impact on the ability of regulators to deliver public interest objectives.

The fact that regulators may enjoy semi-autonomy to deliver on public interest objectives – at times even in defiance of powerful interests in society – does not necessarily disprove more critical views of regulation. In this regard, critical political economy can offer some useful insights into the nature of communications policymaking and regulation on capitalist societies, especially theories that shift away from more mechanistic and instrumentalist views where communications rulemaking and implementation serves to normalise capitalism. Drawing on Giddens’ concept of ‘structuration’, Mosco (2009: 16) has argued in relation to communications policy that social action is shaped by the opportunities and constraints offered by the structure in which it occurs. Furthermore, institutional dynamics and the choices of individual actors may well lead to more open-ended policy and regulatory outcomes (Hardy, 2014: 187–192). However, this shift towards a more fluid conceptualisation of the relationship between structure and agency does not help analysts to predict when agency or structure may exercise inordinate influence over communications policymaking: an issue that will be explored later on in this article in relation to the DTT transition in South Africa.

Broadcasting deregulation and diversity: the global context

Digitisation has made many technological innovations possible in broadcasting. DTT is being phased in throughout the world, allowing broadcasting regulators to free up spectrum for other uses, such as wireless internet. Many of these developments have been rapid, outpacing national (or macro) and regulatory (or micro) policies. Policymakers have scrambled to catch up, and regulators have been pursuing DTT switchovers in this changing environment.

Recognising an opportunity to challenge rules that constrain their profit-making, commercial broadcasters around the world have used opportunities presented by these changes to argue for wide-scale de-regulation. Promoting ‘trickle down’ approaches to broadcasting development, they have argued that as companies introduce new innovations, consumers will begin to enjoy access to a diversity of platforms and content. In terms of this view, anti-concentration rules, especially cross-media ownership rules, are not needed any longer; rather, the public interest will be met by allowing consumers to choose what interests them. In this paradigm, the public interest is equated with consumer choice, individual rights and liberalised markets (Freedman, 2008). They have argued that sector-specific regulators are an anachronism, and that regulatory intervention should rather be made by competition authorities. Those communications regulators that continue to exist should shift to light-touch regulation, so as not to stifle market innovation; but in reality, de-regulation has actually involved re-regulation along market lines (Freedman, 2008; McChesney, 2003: 126).

Commercial broadcasters have also argued that content regulations, such as local content quotas, and ownership regulations, are unnecessary and should be phased out. Companies in digitally converged environment are notoriously susceptible to vertical integration, as they wish to maximise their competitive advantages across the value chain (Ahn, 2006: 56–57). Market re-regulation can lead to public interest considerations of universality and content diversity being marginalised; this is because economic criteria come to dominate cultural criteria in regulation (Bilir, 2005: 2–3). Public service broadcasters (PBSs) could be the biggest losers in the scramble to ‘de-regulate’, as they struggle with declining audience numbers and reduced public subsidies. The DTT migration process can lead to more channels with fewer owners, which threatens media pluralism and diversity. ¹ In fact, the explosion of digital media, including on the Internet, has not necessarily led to greater diversity. Rather than simply increasing consumer choice, the proliferation of new media platforms has led, at times, to ‘more of the same’ media sources (Downie and Macintosh, 2006: 1–2; Dwyer and Martin, 2010). These threats to diversity mean that regulation is as important in the digital environment as it was in the analogue environment, if not more important.

Africa has faced particular challenges in responding to this digital environment. Many African governments have been reluctant to cede control of broadcasting to independent regulators: one of the failures of the post-communist media transition on the continent (Berger, 2012: 24). They have also refused to legislate for media diversity, fearing a loss of control over the media, although control has been exercised more in relation to the more popular and accessible medium of broadcasting than the more elitist press (Barker, 2001: 13). After an initial wave of liberalisation and de-regulation, more governments began to re-regulate along authoritarian lines (Chuma and Moyo, 2010: 5). However, South Africa is one of the few exceptions to this general rule, having established an independent regulator shortly before the transition from apartheid to democracy, in 1993. In fact, Icasa’s independence is constitutionally guaranteed; although the extent of Icasa’s independence has been contested, it cannot be considered an agency of the executive arm of government. Icasa has been grappling with the challenges of regulating broadcasting in the converging digital environment, including the place of DTT in this environment.

Challenges of regulating DTT

Since the 1990s, there has also been a trend towards corporate dominance of media policymaking, leading to neoliberal solutions to policy problems dominating the policy space. While policy processes often appear to be open and claim to operate in the public interest, in reality key ‘stakeholders’ tend to operate in ideological conformity that prioritises the interests of media businesses (Freedman, 2008: 104). Many of these policy processes are technically complex, and DTT especially so, which tends to invite responses from the media industry, attorneys, government and parastatals and a small group of professionalised non-governmental organisations, raising the danger of elite policy capture of policymaking. This can defeat one of the main objectives of participatory policy making, namely, to ensure that media policies reflect what citizens want out of their media system. However, this is not to say that macro- or micro-policy cannot be influenced by interest groups that are motivated by considerations other than profit; much depends on the balance of forces in society. Ironically, given the strong prevalence of market regulation in the United States media market, public interest considerations have been much easier to achieve in the digital migration process than in Canada (Taylor, 2010: 8–15). The migration process needs significant regulatory capacity, which is lacking in many African countries (Hills, 2003: 34–70). As there are few independent regulators on the continent, the migration process has been driven by governments, which has increased the potential for conflicts of interest as decisions risk being taken to advantage vested interests rather than the public interest.

Broadcasting regulators still engaged in the transition need the capacity to pursue a form of digital migration that would ultimately benefit users. In this regard, it is important for policymakers and regulators to take user-pull factors into account and not just producer/technological-push factors, as this balancing of user and producer interests would impact decisions about the type of set-top box, the length of the dual illumination period (a transition period when broadcasters broadcast on analogue and digital frequencies), the need for subsidies to enable poorer viewers to afford the set-top-box, the most appropriate broadcast standard and the allocation of the digital dividend. Most importantly, regulators need to ensure that the DTT migration brings voices into the television landscape that have hitherto been marginalised, rather than allowing incumbent broadcasters to entrench themselves and lock out new aspirant broadcasters. This is particularly important in a country such as South Africa, which manifests both a great need for media diversity and disturbingly high levels of media concentration.

The local context: South Africa’s troubled media transition

It seems trite to say that South Africa’s broadcasting environment has transformed significantly since the advent of democracy in 1994. The state broadcaster, the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC), has been transformed partially into a public broadcaster (although there are signs of a reversion to state broadcasting), new licences have been issued and a whole new layer of media, namely, community media, have been established. At the outset of South African broadcasting’s transition, the liberation movement argued for the establishment of three tiers of broadcasting: commercial, community and public service. Multiparty negotiations between the movement and the apartheid regime agreed to this arrangement, and in the post-apartheid period, this agreement was concretised in the Independent Broadcasting Authority Act and the 1998 White Paper on Broadcasting Policy (Department of Communications, 1998). The three tiers of broadcasting model, which applies to television too, is a form of structural regulation, designed to ensure pluralism and diversity are built into the media system where the existence of commercial and non-commercial services, local, regional and national, is guaranteed in policy and law. Such guarantees are meant to ensure that no one tier of broadcasting dominates (Hitchins, 2006: 133–134).

But questions still remain about the extent of pluralism and diversity in the South African media, especially in relation to television, given that it is a more expensive medium than radio. As far back as 2001, Robert Horwitz (2001) warned about the public service aspects of South Africa’s media system being side-lined by what he called a ‘commercialising juggernaut’ (pp. 137–177). This prediction has, to an extent, come to pass in that television has become dominated by one tier (the commercial tier), while the non-commercial elements of public service and community television have been side-lined, which have had to adopt commercial principles in order to survive (Duncan and Glenn, 2010). The public funding that has been available for public service and community media has been inadequate to change the overall direction of the media system (Skinner, 2005). This means that the broadcasting landscape still reflects the ‘two worlds’ of the media-rich and media-poor that was referred to in the Department of Communications most significant policy statement of the post-apartheid period, the 1998 White Paper on Broadcasting (Department of Communications, 1998).

The distinction between the three tiers of broadcasting was muddied even further when, during debates on amendments to the Broadcasting Act, Parliament decided to create two categories of public broadcasting, namely, public commercial broadcasting and public broadcasting. The intention behind doing so was to free government up from the obligation to fund the SABC, by ensuring that the former cross-subsidised the latter. The SABC has always received very little funding and has remained overwhelmingly reliant on commercial sources of funding (especially advertising). However, there is little evidence available that this cross-subsidisation model has ever worked, or even that the public commercial channels or stations could even afford to cross-subsidise the public channels or stations (Lloyd et al., 2010). Rather, the government decision to deny the SABC public funding has led to the commercialisation of stations falling into both categories, rendering the distinction meaningless. While South Africa has legislated for three tiers of broadcasting, it has not prescribed how much of the spectrum should be used for each tier: in this regard, it is unlike Uruguay, which legislated that one-third of the frequency spectrum should be allocated to community broadcasters (Hintz, 2011: 153).

The most significant efforts in broadcasting transformation took place in the first decade of democracy; for instance, a commercial free-to-air competitor to the SABC’s public commercial stations was launched in 1998, in the form of e.tv. However, progress has stalled in the second decade of democracy. No more commercial free-to-air licences have been issued by Icasa since then. Attempts by Icasa to licence more subscription television broadcasters, as competitors to the dominant Multichoice/Digital Satellite Television (DSTV) company – owned by South African media multinational Naspers – have not led to significant competition. A cross-media ownership control clause in the Electronic Communications Act (ECA) – the overarching law governing converged communications in South Africa – forbids broadcasting licencees from controlling a newspaper with an average weekly circulation of at least 25% of circulation. However, Icasa ruled that the ownership and control provisions in the ECA do not apply to subscription broadcasters (ICASA, 2005: 70–71). Their thinking was in line with a recommendation made by Icasa’s predecessor in broadcasting, the Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA), that subscription broadcasting should be subjected to lighter touch regulation than free-to-air broadcasting, to encourage innovation in the sector.

This decision allowed space for the growth of a major media player (Naspers) in both legacy and new media spaces, to the detriment of plurality and diversity. Established initially as the newspaper group Nasionale Pers in 1915, the group has grown to become the most powerful media group in South Africa and has even expanded to other countries. The group ventured into subscription broadcasting in the mid-1980s, with the establishment of M-Net, and has benefited massively from its investment in Chinese instant messaging service Tencent. Apart from dominating the press (by 2009 it commanded just under 40% of total newspaper circulation (Media Development and Diversity Agency (MDDA), 2009)), it also dominates subscription television and South African news on the Internet (through its subsidiary News24) (Muller, 2011).

After an initial hiatus, community television became a reality when Icasa licenced stations from 2004 onwards. By 2014, there were nine stations on-air with community television licences, showing that the sector was capable of rapid growth (Aldridge, 2014). However, soon the sector became dominated by commercial broadcasters. Icasa argued in defence of its decisions that its statutory framework requires it to consider class licences, such as community licences, on a first-come-first serve basis. As more commercially oriented stations were able to organise themselves more rapidly than non-commercial ones, the former enjoyed a head start in the overall development of the sector, which made the first-come-first serve approach counterproductive (Aldridge, 2011; Pygma Consulting, 2011).

The South African television system remains dominated by free-to-air reception, with 65% of the television-watching population, watching on a free-to-air basis (Moyo, 2015). However, more audiences who can afford subscriptions are migrating to DSTV, owing to the lack of choice in free-to-air television. The television system’s orientation towards a commercial media model means that the system risks becoming skewed towards the ‘have’s’ in society, rather than the ‘have-nots’. South Africa has very high levels of inequality, with unemployment being a key driver of this inequality. In South Africa, youth under the age of 35 years constitute 70% of the population, and those under 15 years, 35% of the population. Nearly 3 million of the 6.7 million young South Africans are disengaged from society’s major institutions, and youth unemployment is estimated at 51%. As a result, youth are represented disproportionately in the lower income brackets, making them less attractive to advertisers. While youth media consumption patterns are changing worldwide, with the Internet becoming an increasingly important medium for the youth, in South Africa young people still remain heavily reliant on television for news, information, education and entertainment, especially public service television (Malila et al., 2013).

Media policy needs to protect the ability of society’s most marginalised citizens – especially its youth – to receive and impart information and ideas, and thereby to participate in the public sphere, as their right to be heard is most under threat. The DTT transition provides South Africa with an opportunity to address television’s uneven development, and its impact on audiences, given the enhanced technological capacity for more broadcasters to offer more channels. Conversely, regulations that fail to address these disparities would also fail television viewers.

The battle of the multiplexes: the DTT transition in South Africa

Initially, South Africa planned for a short dual illumination period of 3 years, commencing 1 November 2008 (Department of Communications, 2008: 4). A short period was meant to benefit broadcasters as they could reduce the costs of broadcasting in both analogue and digital formats. In order to kick-start the process, and in line with the 2008 policy, Icasa released regulations in 2010. The regulations empowered Icasa to make two multiplexes (digital frequencies allowing for the sending of multiple messages) available for the dual illumination period, and it prescribed that the broadcasters should broadcast in a standard definition (SD) format. By that time, there were two public broadcasting channels (SABC 1 and SABC 2), three commercial channels (SABC 3, M-Net and e.tv) and one community television broadcaster (the Eastern Cape-based Christian station, the Trinity Broadcasting Network). The first multiplex was allocated to the SABC, which was required to maintain a ratio of three public service channels to one public commercial channel, thereby maintaining an overall public service character for its television stations (at least in theory). The Trinity Broadcasting Network was also authorised to use multiplex 1. A total of 50% of multiplex 2 (or MUX) was allocated to e.tv and 40% to M-Net (ICASA, 2010) (Figure 1).

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Figure 1.

Allocation of multiplexes in Icasa’s 2010 regulations.

These regulations were problematic, as they confined the dual illumination period to incumbent broadcasters, to protect them from competition and to incentivise them to undertake the migration process. As a result, new aspirant broadcasters were locked out of the process for a period of 3 years. Icasa assumed that the problem would be temporary, and competition could be introduced once the migration process was completed. However, the migration process proved to be more protracted than the government and Icasa envisaged, which meant that new entrants risked being locked out of the process for even longer than 3 years. Another problem was that the regulations weighed heavily in favour of commercial broadcasting, with a third of MUX 1 and the whole of MUX 2 being allocated to commercial broadcasting (if the SABC’s public commercial channels are included into the calculation). No additional capacity was made available for community television, for instance.

After Icasa released its regulations, South Africa chose to adopt the more efficient DVB-T2 standard and MPEG-4 compression standard, which opened up possibilities of new entrants being introduced even during the dual illumination period. According to the Ministry of Communications’ Amended Broadcasting Digital Migration Policy of 17 February 2012, Icasa was directed to explore how best to use the new efficiencies of DVB-T2 introduce new services and licensees to increase media diversity and introduce new subscription broadcasters while ensuring that the digital migration process gave priority to incumbent broadcasters (Department of Communications, 2012: 6). In an attempt to bring its regulatory framework into line with this new policy, Icasa released new draft regulations, requiring the migration process to use the DVB-T2 standard and proposing that more community television stations, and not just Trinity, be accommodated on the multiplexes. The draft regulations gave broadcasters the choice of whether to broadcast in SD or high definition (HD) format and also left the door open for the establishment of a third multiplex for new commercial free-to-air and subscription television broadcasters (called ‘MUX “n”’), using the capacity in a second multiplex allocated to mobile television (ICASA, 2011).

Mobile television was piloted with great fanfare before South Africa’s hosting of the 2010 World Cup, as broadcasters anticipated that the mega-event would drive the market for mobile television. However, in reality, the take-up of mobile television was relatively muted, as the receiver costs were too high and, more fundamentally, there was limited demand for the technology. In fact, globally, mobile television appeared to be a technology in search of a use. By 2011, there were strong signs that it would probably never reach a mass audience, even if receiver costs came down, given the preference of many television viewers to watch television at home. Internationally, mobile television met with a mixed reception, and with the possible exceptions of Japan and South Korea, the technology did not seem to meet a clear demand. To hoard spectrum for services whose utility was unclear was unjustifiable, so releasing MDTT2 for DTT use – where the usage could benefit far more viewers than those who stood to benefit from mobile television – made a great deal of sense.

However, in spite of these pro-diversity proposals, Icasa’s regulations did not capture the letter or spirit of the Department’s new policy adequately. The regulations reduced the SABC’s share of MUX 1, proposing that 80% of this multiplex would be used by the broadcaster, with community television using 10% of the multiplex. By that time, the number of community stations had increased from one to five. While MUX 2 was reserved for commercial broadcasting, the allocations differed from the previous regulations, with e.tv being given 40%, M-Net 30% and the remaining 30% being warehoused for future use (ICASA, 2011). These reallocations showed that Icasa had moved away from its original position of protecting the incumbents and was prepared to entertain some competition during the dual illumination period, although the incumbents were still advantaged. However, Icasa’s proposals created another set of problems, in that when the proposed allocations for all three multiplexes was considered, there would have been a de facto reduction in the proportion of the spectrum available to public and community television. This was because the allocations for public service and community television shrank while the proportion of spectrum available to commercial broadcasting increased as the proposed new multiplex was allocated entirely to commercial broadcasting, both subscription and free-to-air (Figure 2).

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Figure 2.

Proposed allocation of multiplexes in ICASA’s 2011 regulations.

These proposals undermined national policy’s requirement that there be three tiers of broadcasting. Icasa’s draft proposals were designed implicitly to advance corporate interests and marketisation, which would have led to public and community television being weakened even more. The regulations did require the SABC to provide regional windows, though, which was a positive development, but this proposal could not be allowed to substitute for community stations on a stand-alone basis. The regulations also entrenched further the nonsensical split between public services and public commercial services in the SABC. Rather, had SABC 3 been re-designated a public channel – thereby increasing the proportion of MUX 1 for public service broadcasting and – and all three channels been de-commercialised by removing advertising, then advertising would have been freed up for new broadcasters. This proposal was not outside the realm of possibility; in fact, the ruling African National Congress (ANC) has favoured a less commercialised SABC, with more public funding (ANC, 2002).

The draft regulations threatened to lead to increased competition combined with reduced diversity, which would have represented a missed opportunity for the digital transition to broaden the public sphere beyond commercially viable audiences. While there were positive proposals in the regulations, the overall direction of the digital transition threatened to turn the policy of three tiers of broadcasting – already under strain – into a policy in name only. The proposed upward redistribution of spectrum to upper-income brackets would have longer term negative consequences for the many South Africans who rely overwhelmingly on public and community television, as it was likely that they may not recover lost ground after the migration process.

The HD television conundrum

The open-ended nature of Icasa’s draft regulations on SD and HD television was problematic, in that it left the choice of which format to broadcast in up to the broadcasters. Commercially oriented broadcasters, such as M-Net, were inclined to favour HD television, even at the expense of offering more channels, as an HD proposition would allow them to attract upper income viewers who already have access to HD television–enabled sets and wished to improve picture quality. As these audiences are also likely to have access to a multitude of media, they will be less likely to be affected by fewer channel offerings. However, Icasa’s opening up of the possibility of HD television made the digital transition harder to achieve. While HD television may well become the main television standard of the future, it was not at the time when the draft regulations were debated, and it is likely that the DTT transition will be completed before South Africans bought HD television–enabled television sets in their numbers. Countries undertaking digital migration often took decisions about whether to prioritise HD television or to emphasise multichannel offerings to encourage voluntary digital take-up: these trade-offs remain relevant in spite of the improved compression standard. Icasa’s regulations implied that such a trade-off did, in fact, need to be made, given that on the regulator’s own estimation, an HD channel would use approximately three times the channel capacity of an SD channel. As Michael Starks has argued,

In countries where terrestrial reception is dominant, high digital penetration achieved during the period of voluntary take-up is important as a pre-condition of switchover, since this reduces the number of households whose main TV set is likely to be analogue at the point of compulsion. Such take-up does not have to be exclusively digital terrestrial but other platforms only contribute if they carry digital versions of the analogue terrestrial services to be withdrawn. (Starks, 2007: 7)

South Africa faces the massive challenge of encouraging voluntary take-up of digital television in a relatively short space of time. If audiences are to be persuaded that buying set top boxes is a worthwhile outlay of money, there need to be demonstrable benefits, which implies relevant multichannel offerings that speak to the country’s news, informational and entertainments needs and interests on a mass scale. During the dual illumination period, this will most likely have to be at the expense of HD television. In contrast, Britain ensured a relatively quick take-up of digital broadcasting because they made a policy choice to prioritise multichanneling, leading to over 30 new multichannel offerings being made available through the Freeview service, developed by the British Broadcasting Corporation, ITV, Sky, Channel 4 and Arqiva (Starks, 2007).

If South Africa is to avoid viewer resistance to the process, and a politically destabilising backlash on the eve of switch-off, then it needs to prioritise multichannel offerings over and above HD television. Decisions about these trade-offs should not be left to the discretion of the broadcasters. While Icasa should have adopted SD as the default standard for the dual illumination period, it should have allowed broadcasters the option to broadcast in HD television on good cause shown. However, Icasa chose to bow to the pressure of e.tv and M-Net and leave the decision up to the broadcasters, placing the migration process in jeopardy in the process.

The final DTT regulations

Icasa released final regulations at the end of 2012, which still refused to prescribe whether broadcasters should broadcast in SD or HD for the dual illumination period. By that stage, the commercial incumbents had already signalled their intention to broadcast in HD, which meant that significant multi-channelling was a less likely option. A total of 85% of MUX 1 was allocated to the SABC, and the remaining 15% to community broadcasters; so, the former lost out slightly to the latter, mainly because of some effective lobbying of the regulator by community television stations and public interest groups (ICASA, 2012: 25). The allocations for MUX 2 changed more significantly, with 50% being given to e.tv and 40% to M-Net, with a mere 10% being warehoused for temporary licencees and trials (ICASA, 2012). The final regulations advantaged the incumbents slightly more than the draft regulations – especially the commercial ones – suggesting that they had been successful in their lobbying for more multiplex capacity during the public hearings. Presumably, Icasa was looking to the third multiplex to create more spaces for new broadcasters.

However, from a media diversity perspective, the regulator’s plans proved disappointing. Seeking to please both the government and the incumbent broadcasters, they confined the first two multiplexes to existing players while starting a separate process for the allocation of the third multiplex. In 2014, Icasa released further regulations relating to the first and third multiplexes. Evocatively titled ‘Promotion of diversity and competition on digital terrestrial television regulations’, Icasa confirmed in these regulations that excess channel capacity in the first multiplex would be assigned to community broadcasters, and that the third multiplex would, in fact, be created, with 45% being reserved for commercial subscription television, and the remaining 55% being reserved for commercial free-to-air television (ICASA, 2014). This further regulatory intervention meant that the television system was tilted vastly in favour of commercial broadcasting; in fact, from the original 2010 regulations, commercial television’s share of the multiplexes had grown 23%, and public service television’s had shrunk 11%, while community television’s had remained largely static. So while commercial broadcasters did not win their argument to lock new competitors out of the dual illumination process entirely, they did win a bigger ideological struggle for the commercial broadcasting to be dominant tier by far, ensuring the massive marketisation of the DTT transition (Figure 3).

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Figure 3.

Allocation of multiplexes in ICASA’s 2012 and 2014 regulations.

The SABC had promised Parliament that they would offer 18 channels (Vermeulen, 2011). Then, the SABC announced that it would launch its DTT offerings with a mere five channels, all of which already exist. In other words, the SABC would not create any new channel diversity (News24, 2015), which begged the question of why the transition was even being made in the first place. E.tv’s plans were slightly more ambitious: by 2013, they had promised four channels: a movie channel, an African-focussed channel, a local content channel and its original channel (Ferreira, 2013). They launched these in 2013 on a subscription-free HD conditional access television platform called OpenView HD, and they intend to migrate these onto the free to air platform when the dual illumination process commences. At the time of writing, there was no clarity about M-Net’s proposed channel offerings. In September 2015, Icasa advertised an invitation to apply for MUX 3 capacity for commercial subscription television providers, which signalled their intention to go ahead with this aspect of the migration process (Ellipsis, 2015).

Conclusion

South Africa’s DTT policy is infused with technological optimism; that is, it maintains that technology can bring about positive changes to society. However, what technology optimists tend to miss is that technology is inserted into existing social relations, which constrains technology-take up. These constraints have become especially apparent in Icasa’s development of DTT regulations, drafted apparently to give effect to national policy. Under pressure from commercial broadcasters to ensure that they received the lion’s share of the multiplexes, the regulator has redistributed digital spectrum to the commercial tier, with its bias towards upper-income brackets. While Icasa’s regulations will no doubt contribute to plurality – in that new broadcasters will be introduced even during the dual illumination period – they may not contribute sufficiently to diversity. It could be argued that the dual illumination period is temporary, and more diversity could be created once it has ended, but after this setback, community and public service television may not recover their footholds in the television system.

It could also be argued that national policy has forced Icasa into the position of de-prioritising community and public service television: that is, by providing insufficient funding for structural regulation for three tiers of broadcasting, the government has forced the regulator’s hand, making it take seemingly sensible decisions about spectrum allocation. However, this argument is shaky. Icasa is fortunate in that it enjoys high levels of independence; it could have done much more with this independence than it has. Instead, it has taken a series of decisions that advantaged commercial broadcasters and their priorities and reinforced the dominance of Naspers. The considerable delays in the transition created by these policy changes and ongoing bickering about the specifications for the set-top box have been to the advantage of Naspers, which has used the interregnum to lure more commercially attractive audiences away from free-to-air television. However, as this article focusses on content diversity, it has not considered these other controversial areas of the DTT transition. In a recent regulatory review, while Icasa acknowledged the fragility of the community broadcasting sector and the consequent need to update its regulations on this sector (ICASA, 2012: 45), it failed to pronounce on the need for more support for public broadcasting, or on government attempts to reduce the SABC’s independence. In response to criticisms raised by member of the public on its lack of oversight of the SABC, the only response Icasa could muster was ‘the Authority has considered the above [comments] and share them with the Ministry of Communications’ (ICASA, 2012: 49). On these issues, the regulator could have spoken back to power, but it has failed to do so. In fact, even the ruling ANC has expressed concern about the monopolisation of broadcasting: in a warning to its own members not to promote monopolistic behaviour so that they could reap the business benefits, the ANC stated that their activities should be informed by ‘the national and public interest, and not commercial imperatives’ (ANC, 2015: 144).

The reason why Icasa has not used the space available for it to be a more vigorous advocate for broadcasting diversity bears some analysis. Icasa came into being from a merger between a broadcasting and telecommunications regulator in 2000. Its predecessor, the IBA, came about from the anti-apartheid struggles of the early 1990s, when it became apparent that a political settlement to South Africa’s political problems was looming. In fact, the establishment of an independent regulatory authority was a key demand of the liberation movement during negotiations. However, once it was established, the coalition of anti-apartheid forces that gave rise to the IBA (under the umbrella of the Campaign for Independent Broadcasting) was demobilised, presumably because the ANC felt it had achieved its objective of taking state power.

Without the guidance, and at times pressure, from a democratic mass movement, the IBA, and subsequently Icasa, lost its moorings. This was especially so when – in response to a speculative attack on the currency – the government marketised public services along neoliberal lines in the late 1990s. On balance, the regulator has facilitated a market-led approach in broadcasting, yet, South Africa is such an unequal country that democracy is not served by a significant portion of the broadcasting system being subject to capital accumulation, as this can lead to massive information inequalities (McChesney, 1993: 98). Icasa is not a government institution: to that extent, it is not subject to the electoral pressures that governments and parties such as the ANC are. Insulated (to an extent) from pressures from above, as well as pressures from below, such an institution can easily lose touch with public priorities, notwithstanding the fact that it claims to represent the public interest. The problem is made worse if the main voices it hears on a regular basis are industry-based. This can lead to the regulator assuming that the commercial model of broadcasting is the common-sense model for all broadcasting, and that private ownership is the premise from which broadcasting policy should move. Thus, its upward redistribution of spectrum could be understood as a form of ‘accumulation by dispossession’ ² (Harvey, 2003): that is, spectrum that should have been treated as a communications commons, and that rightfully should have been available to audiences irrespective of their socio-economic status, is redistributed to commercial broadcasters for the purposes of capital accumulation. This means that those who are not attractive to advertisers are unable to produce intangible symbolic goods, as they lack the means to do so.

The problem with the main regulatory theories, as discussed earlier, is that they are structural analyses in the main; they are not agentially focussed. Furthermore, they exhibit a statist bias. Yet, at the same time, while critical political economy’s embracing of more pluralistic accounts of policy and regulation-making has led to a welcome shift away from more deterministic accounts, they shed little theoretical light on the circumstances in which agency may win out over structure, or vice versa. Cox and Nilsen’s proposal for understanding the state as a movement from above can help to break this conceptual logjam (Cox and Nilsen, 2014: 59–71) as it demystifies the state as a structure produced by the agency of dominant groups, rather than a faceless, unchanging entity. This reconceptualisation is an important first step towards encourage regulatory activism; this is because if social actors realise that existing state entities, such as regulators, ³ have been shaped by human collectives, then they can be reshaped by them too. The older movements that brought Icasa into being have been demobilised or institutionalised. New movements, independent of the ruling hegemonic bloc ⁴ are struggling to come into being. Civil society organisations are playing an important role in raising public interest issues, but unless these organisations are underpinned by mass movements, their ability to effect meaningful change will be limited; some of the most prominent organisations, such as the SoS – Support Public Broadcasting Coalition and the Right 2 Know Campaign, recognise this. In this regard, there are significant political shifts towards anti-capitalist and socialist politics which may – in time to come – place de-commodification squarely on the communications agenda. Once this happens, then perhaps another broadcasting system may become not only conceivable but also possible.