Office of the President has turned itself into an innovation hub by reinventing the wheel on local content quota. Not too long ago, that same invention failed to perform as maximally as a scientist from a neighbouring country had hoped. Nothing suggests that OP’s reinvention will fare any better.
For decades now, Botswana artists have been demanding that local content on state-owned broadcast platforms (namely Radio Botswana 1, Radio Botswana 2 and Botswana Television) should be heavily skewed in favour of local artists. That culminated in the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding between the Department of Broadcasting Services (DBS) and the Copyright Society of Botswana (COSBOTS). In terms of that MoU, 80 percent of the songs played on state broadcasting channels will be local.
A recent development will make things even more interesting. Btv recently launched three broadcasting channels: Btv News, Btv 1 and Btv 2. Btv News is an all-news channel, Btv1 is an entertainment channel and Btv2 is an information and educational channel. The new channels were launched upon Botswana’s migration from analogue to digital transmission.
DBS has struck a deal with Botswana’s premier deejay, DJ Fresh, “to assist artists to take advantage of the 80 percent local music quota determined for the state broadcasting services.” That explanation is from OP’s Deputy Permanent Secretary (Information and Broadcasting Services), Oshinka Tsiang. As of this writing, DJ Fresh is going around the country teaching artists tricks of a trade that he personally mastered so well that he cornered the South Africa market for a good part of three decades.
What happened some 400 kilometres away from the Mass Media Complex, the hub of the government media operations in Gaborone, is instructive. The venue of interest is Auckland Park, Johannesburg, where the headquarters of the South African Broadcasting Corporation are located. In 2017, SABC’s chief operating officer was a man called Hlaudi Motsoeneng, whose appointment to that post was part of a broader manifestation of the dysfunction of Jacob Zuma’s presidency.
Out of the blue and with no due diligence having taken place, Motsoeneng suddenly announced a 90 percent local content quota for SABC radio stations. The quota was later extended to TV channels. When all this was unfolding, experts cautioned that Motsoeneng’s experiment would fail because it had been tried in other countries – with disastrous results.
Jared Borkum, a lecturer in Directing, Producing, and Entrepreneurship at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology told a publication called BusinessTech that this venture was not feasible.
“It is cheaper to buy American content than to produce locally. This has been the case since TV started in South Africa in 1976. The SABC spends less buying a 12-part series from the US than putting up the money to make a good 12-part series in South Africa,” he said.
An uncommonly stubborn person, Motsoeneng went ahead and implemented the quota. Shortly thereafter, Metro FM, an urban music radio station in the SABC stable, backtracked and resorted to playing 50 percent local music and 50 percent international music. The reason was that advertisers – who kept the station afloat and took cue from listeners – were fleeing in droves. This development illuminated a very important dynamic: the power doesn’t lie with the bureaucratic machinery but with listeners and advertisers.
From the board to senior management level, the SABC of Motsoeneng’s time was unalloyed Third World chaos and in desperate need of overhauling. When such overhauling did happen, both the board and Motsoeneng were shown the door. The latter was fired after an internal disciplinary hearing found him guilty of bringing the SABC into disrepute and causing “irreparable damage” to his employer.
A good portion of that damage was financial and the new board was forced to scrap Motsoeneng’s decision to make all broadcast content 90 percent local. Its reasoning was that the decision “undermined the entire business.” BusinessTech quoted one board member, Krish Naidoo, as saying the decision “impacted on the entire revenue stream. Both listeners and advertising dropped, likely as a consequence of 90:10.”
Appearing before the parliamentary Communications portfolio committee after Motsoeneng’s departure, SABC acting CEO, James Aguma, told committee members that the Corporation was facing a financial crisis and that its flagship commercial television and radio stations were haemorrhaging audiences. The latter resulted in a drop in advertising spend by both local and multinational clients. Aguma told the committee that the 90 percent local content quota had cost SABC “dearly” and that the biggest losers were commercial and flagship radio stations Metro FM, 5FM, Goodhope FM and the SABC 3 television channel.
There were two more interesting developments. City Press reported that Radio 702, East Coast radio stations as well as Multichoice DStv gained listeners that SABC lost.
“Soon advertising revenue followed the listeners where they had migrated to, leaving the SABC stable dry,” the paper said.
It added that the artists that Motsoeneng had set out to empower were themselves disempowered: “… they now find themselves in a far worse position than they were as revenue has dried up and they cannot be paid.”
At least one artist came out to lambaste Motsoeneng for duping artists with a misconceived PR stunt. That artist was Mfundi Vundla, creator of the hugely popular and long-running Generations soap opera – which was very popular in Batswana when it aired on SABC. Vundla said that Motsoeneng’s policy had not been accompanied by adequate capital investment to make its implementation feasible.
“If you say there should be 90 percent local content in television, that needs to be accompanied by a massive infusion in capital investment,” Vundla is quoted as saying. “You cannot just declare 90 percent local content without the money to make that content. The SABC did not have that money so it was an empty promise.”
Issues highlighted in the SABC experience will be germane as the Mass Media Complex attempts what the latter attempted but with disastrous consequences.
As a society, Batswana (who would be expected to listen to a steady stream of local content) are acculturating into western identity. Some are addicted to American music and if they can’t get their fix of Lil Wayne, Jay Z, Drake or Chris Brown on RB 2, they will certainly emigrate to digital platforms where they are assured of getting it. Advertisers will follow those listeners.
Related to that is the preponderance of South African content across Botswana households and entertainment venues. Promoters know that for a music show to do well commercially, it must be headlined by a South African artist. That is why Makhazi has taken virtual residence in Botswana – and apparently found love at a Phakalane double-storey. If Radio Botswana and Btv play more of the alleged boyfriend and less of his South African lover’s music, listeners will change the dial in search of stations that play more South African music. Likewise, advertisers will follow those listeners. As a commercial radio station, RB2 will be the worst affected.
Most importantly, there is the issue Vundla raises. The 80/20 quota that Mass Media Complex has been crowing about is constructed not around a business model but mere political promise to curry favour with the youth. While DJ Fresh may be teaching deejays how to wear headphones, flick dreadlocks and look hip at the deejay’s box, there has been no massive infusion of capital investment to spur production of local content. With regard to the three new TV stations, that means that local producers will not be able to supply the 80 percent content required to achieve the goals of the government policy.
There is an even bigger and trickier question: what does “local” mean? If you listen to radio stations for longer than 10 minutes, you will hear songs by young people not only trying to sound American but ladling out fantasies about a black American hood they have never lived in. Is their music local?
Many more countries around the world have attempted to introduce local content quotas but the results have been mostly disastrous.
