A research report is submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in ICT Policy and Regulation
to the Faculty of Humanities, University of the Witwatersrand, 2016 / South Africa has a nascent community television sector, which is legislated as a tier
of broadcasting. This sector is important in deepening democracy, creating access to
information, giving communities the space to share information, and expanding
media ownership to communities beyond the public and commercial television
broadcasting sectors. Since 2007, when Soweto TV was the first community
television station to be licensed, the processes towards migrating analogue to digital
terrestrial television have been beset with delays and the experience of the
community TV sector with respect to this migration have been not well understood.
The conceptual-analytical framework for this historical study of the period 2007 to
2014 drew on the key themes of sector and institutional governance including the
effectiveness of policy and regulation, technological advancement, content and
services. Using a constructivist methodology the key documents pertaining to
broadcast digital migration were reviewed and interviews were conducted with
three community TV stations, Soweto TV, Bay TV and Cape Town TV, as well as with
the policy-maker, the regulator and sector experts.
The findings revealed that the community television (CTV) sector was faced with
problems of sector and institutional governance not being effectively addressed in
legislation and regulation, stagnation as a result of lack of spectrum in the analogue
television-broadcasting dispensation and limitations on content provision. Using
McConnell’s 2010 framework, analysis of the data led to the conclusion that the
DTTM programme has failed with respect to the community TV sector. Advances for
the CTV sector will require revision to legislation and future regulation to guide the
governance of the CTV sector and the digital terrestrial television migration should
be concluded without further delay, in order to enable the sector to grow. Although
CTV stations are providing content to communities, the opportunity for them to
make a greater impact, if digital terrestrial television (DTT) is finally launched, should
be prioritised as the new technology can provide them with the scope to expand
their content offerings. / MT2017
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:wits/oai:wiredspace.wits.ac.za:10539/21856 |
| Date | January 2016 |
| Creators | Diseko-Biagini, Fumane |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | Online resource (145 leaves), application/pdf, application/pdf |
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