ANN7's free-to-air ambitions face major hurdles

A few months ago I reported that ANN7 had applied to receive a broadcast licence so that it can take its signal to the masses by being a free to air channel, like SABC and e.tv, when digital terrestrial broadcasting goes live.

Prior to that, a diagram showing the channel's ownership structure surfaced online. Well, now City Press has done what no one else did, even though it was in clear daylight, by putting two and two together by revealing that ANN7 cannot receive a free to air broadcast licence, given current legislation in South Africa.

Under South African law, no tv channel with an ownership structure consisting of more than 25% foreign ownership is allowed to be issued with a free to air broadcasting licence. If you have a good memory, you will remember that in the early days of e.tv, Warner Bros. sold their 25% ownership in the red letter network because South African law prohibited them from owning anymore.

In the case of ANN7, the channel is owned by the Gupta's (who have South African citizenship, by the way), Duduzane Zuma (President Zuma's son) and Essel Media, an Indian company which also owns the likes of Zee Networks. [There are other minority shareholders, like editor-in-chief, Moegsien Williams, as well as a dodgy Dubai based company]

All in all, the channel is owned by 37.5% foreign owndership, way above the 25% cap. To combat this, the channel stated that they will adjust their ownership structure to fall in the guidelines, but will do so after the broadcast licence is awarded.

[Personally, I hope they get the broadcast licence just for the sake of mass market access to news broadcasts. e.tv seems to be going out of their way to stop eNCA from showing up on their free to air platform, OpenviewHD, whilst here ANN7 really wants to do the opposite]