The SABC wants you to pay a TV licence fee for your phone, tablet, and PC!
SABC boss James Aguma apparently told Parliament today that the company wants to amend the Broadcasting Act – that’s the one that prescribes mandatory TV licences for TVs – to include mandatory TV licences for things that aren’t TVs. You can’t make this stuff up.
Aguma, SABC executives and the SABC’s new interim board appeared before parliament’s portfolio committee on communications to brief members of parliament about the latest situation at the crisis-riddled public broadcaster and its revised corporate plan.
According to Channel24, this revised plan extends to phones, tablets, and PCs (and presumably consoles, when they find out about those), and “would broaden the collection base for SABC TV licences which in turn would help to increase the potential revenue the public broadcaster could collect from this income stream”. Or, basically, pay this year’s management bonuses while the SABC flounders between more financial scandals, 7de Laan reruns, and public indifference. But no, obviously people watching Netflix on the toilet is the real problem.
For the moment, a R265 annual TV licence is required for devices that can receive a “TV signal”, an increasingly ambiguous, or perhaps increasingly irrelevant distinction in 2017 when everybody uses streaming services instead. Thankfully I have not and will never pay a TV licence. Netflix is not affiliated to the SABC thank you very much!
This is a bloody joke...
