The South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) and MultiChoice have signed an agreement for DStv to broadcast the SABC’s 24-Hour news channel in line with the public service broadcaster’s preparations for Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT).
In a statement, the SABC said the news channel will be broadcast on both platforms once the migration to DTT takes place.
Hlaudi Motsoeneng, the SABC’s chief operations officer (ACOO) said: “One of the key undertakings of the news channel is that it will provide an opportunity for the SABC to enhance its public service mandate and extend its focus on provincial stories and the different official languages.”
MultiChoice South Africa group chief executive officer (CEO) Imtiaz Patel said: “We are delighted to conclude this agreement with the SABC as we believe it will enhance our local content offering on DStv. The news channel in particular will bring diversity to our news programming, as it will provide our audiences with different views and news from an African perspective”.
Motsoeneng added: “We are very excited about this partnership with MultiChoice as it will expose South African news stories to an audience not only in the country, but outside of South Africa as well.
As a public service broadcaster our mandate is to entertain, inform and educate and there is no better vehicle than news and current affairs to deliver on this. We are cognisant of the fact that millions of South Africans rely on the SABC for their news and to be able to extend our reach further, can only be to the benefit of the South African public.”
The news channel will launch on August 1, 2013, and will be broadcast on DStv channel 404.
