South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) encountered crisis following massive retrenchment of over 600 employees last week.
Sunday World reported that on Thursday, the systems that the corporation (with four TV and 18 radio stations) uses to edit and air content crashed for hours, leading to stations using old content.
The President, Cyril Ramaphosa called the Communications and Digital Technologies Minister Stella Ndabeni- Abrahams over the crisis that were not pleasing for many viewers who expected an upgrade.
A source at the SABC revealed what happened: “The entire broadcasting system came to a standstill this morning [Thursday]. This morning all had to use content from the previous day. They didn’t have contingency plans. They can’t say these are teething problems. You can’t run Africa’s biggest public broadcaster without planning.”
SABC spokesperson Mmoni Seapolelo said: “In any situation in which there are broadcast interruptions due to power failure there is pre-recorded content that goes on air in an instance where live broadcast is not permissible. It is, therefore, not an anomaly for old content or music to be broadcast during this period.”
