The SABC's interim board has dropped the broadcaster's hastily adopted 90% local content quotas for music and 80% local content quotas for television. Further, the corporation has relaunched its editorial policy review process - and this time not in the context of a "good news" agenda. This begs the question - can there now be room for some optimism?
Despite the SABC's serious financial problems, there seems to be a crack in the clouds. Vincent Smith's parliamentary ad hoc committee shone a bright light on corruption, financial mismanagement, censorship and general SABC malfeasance. The committee put forward a clear set of recommendations to "fix" the SABC and a new interim board was appointed to take these recommendations forward. And to date the interim board has achieved some important victories. It has managed finally to fire Hlaudi Motsoeneng and thus end his deeply damaging management regime. Further, the board has started to kick-start a new SABC editorial policy review process. So how do we push this agenda? How do we secure long-term gains?
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