Today marks World TV Day
When TV was first introduced, the majority of South Africans could not afford TV sets, so we did a peculiar thing – we watched our favourite shows at our neighbour's house.
I CANNOT imagine taking my snacks and curling up on the carpet on the floor of my neighbours’ house, to watch the latest episode of my favourite television show on Netflix.
While this seems like a foreign concept, this is exactly what we did as children when television was first introduced in South Africa in 1976.
You see, some families could not afford to buy a TV so that meant we had to share – yes, I know, a foreign concept.
Today, November 21, marks the UN-designated World Television Day. The day started as a tribute to the powerful, informative, and entertaining medium.
With the speed at which technology develops nowadays, I cannot imagine that this is how we consumed television shows for a good three years until our family managed to afford to buy a portable black-and-white television set. None of my siblings remembers, but I seem to remember, perhaps 1980 or so.
I remember all the shows we watched right at television’s inception in South Africa, but some of the later shows, which I’m sure many Gen X and Millennials will recall, include Dallas, and Bennie Boekwurm every Tuesday. Dallas was an international hit, but Bennie Boekwurm was a good, old South African production.
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According to Wikipedia, in 1971, the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC), was finally allowed to introduce a television service. They finally managed to launch it in 1976. Despite being Africa’s most economically advanced country, South Africa was relatively late in introducing television broadcasting to its population.
Initially, the proposal was for two television channels, one in English and Afrikaans, aimed at white audiences, and another, known as TV Bantu, aimed at black viewers, but when television was finally introduced, there was only one channel. Experimental broadcasts in the main cities began on 5 May 1975, before nationwide service commenced on 5 January 1976.
In common with most of Western Europe, South Africa used the PAL system for colour television, being only the second terrestrial television service in Africa to launch with a colour-only service. The Government, advised by SABC technicians, took the view that colour television would have to be available so as to avoid a costly migration from black-and-white broadcasting technology.
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Initially, the TV service was funded entirely through a licence fee as in the UK, but advertising began in 1978.
In 1981, a second channel was introduced, broadcasting in African languages such as isiZulu, Xhosa, Sotho and Tswana. The main channel, then called TV1, was divided evenly between English and Afrikaans. Subtitling on TV was almost non-existent, the assumption being that people had no desire to watch programmes in languages they did not speak.
In 1986, the SABC’s monopoly was challenged by the launch of a subscription-based service known as M-Net, backed by a consortium of newspaper publishers.
However, as part of its licensing restrictions, it could not broadcast news programmes, which were still the preserve of the SABC, although M-Net started broadcasting a current affairs programme, Carte Blanche, in 1988. As the state-controlled broadcaster, the SABC was accused of bias towards the apartheid regime, giving only limited coverage to opposition politicians.
