South Africa’s public broadcaster SABC has announced that it will launch a second SABC News TV channel that will broadcast in vernacular languages.
The SABC said it will soon launch a station similar to the existing English-language one on DStv, with news and current affairs programming in vernacular languages.
After the SABC relaunched its News channel in August 2013 via DStv, it carried the Zulu, Afrikaans, Siswati, Tsonga, Xhosa, isiNdelebe, Sotho and Venda TV news bulletins done for SABC1 and SABC2 throughout the day on the SABC News channel.
After two years, MultiChoice decided to expand the SABC News channel beyond South Africa into the rest of the African continent through its platform.
Additionally, the SABC altered the programming on the channel to an English-only format.
The result was that the SABC dropped TV news bulletins in all other languages besides English from SABC News in April 2015.
The state-owned broadcaster’s channel has been English-only for the past seven years, with SABC TV news bulletins in South Africa’s other official languages only available on SABC1 and SABC2 as once-off broadcasts while also making them available on YouTube.
“The channel will be broadcast on DTT and SABC+,” said Gugu Ntuli, SABC spokesperson per News24.
“In response to the millions of audiences yearning for longer and more quality bulletins and current affairs in African languages, the SABC will soon be launching its 24-hour African news channel to cater to the needs of these loyal viewers.
“The channel will also include more parliamentary content, including content from its committees. More details regarding the name and exciting offerings will be revealed soon.”
Now the SABC is planning on bringing back and expanding these other TV news bulletins in languages other than English on a SABC News spinoff TV channel which will be made available on its SABC+ streaming service, as well as a digital terrestrial television (DTT) channel where it will sit alongside the existing SABC1, SABC2, SABC3, and SABC Sports channels.
The as-yet-unnamed channel is expected to run 24 hours per day, similar to the existing SABC News channel, and will air TV news bulletins and current affairs programming in indigenous languages including parliamentary coverage from Cape Town.
