The news that satellite broadcaster DSTV has created a new ‘cheap’ priced package of channels has caused excitement in some quarters in Swaziland.
The so-called Family Bouquet allows people to access 20 television channels as well as radio and music stations. The news prompted Nathi Gule, the Times of Swaziland’s television writer to prophesise that Swaziland’s two indigenous television channels, Swazi Television and Channel S, would lose the majority of their viewers to DSTV as a result of this.
Critics have complained that Swaziland’s two channels bore viewers with constant repeats of programmes or uninteresting and irrelevant material.
I assume DSTV has introduced its low cost Family Bouquet because it realises that many potential customers across Africa, and not just in Swaziland, simply cannot afford the larger packages on offer. DSTV in its on screen self-promotions presently boasts that viewers can receive more than 70 channels (which I think you’d agree makes the new 20 channel package look like very small beer).
Although, I don’t want to spoil anyone’s viewing enjoyment, I am not convinced that the DSTV package is really in the best interests of the people of Swaziland.
The problem is none of the material on the satellite channels and hardly any on the two Swazi television stations is local. Instead, viewers are given a diet that consists mainly of sport, cheap American and British dramas, soap operas, mostly American movies, and lots and lots of ‘reality’ programmes and game shows.
Even Swazi TV and Channel S broadcast next to no programmes made in the kingdom. If you take away the daily news broadcasts and studio-based interview shows there is little left of a Swazi origin. American talk show hosts such as Oprah Winfrey get almost as much airtime as all the Swazi programming put together.
It is important for television stations to provide programmes that are created locally because these programmes deal with the community’s local needs, knowledge and experience that are relevant to the community. The whole process of creating and broadcasting local content provides opportunities for members of the community to interact with each other, expressing their own ideas, knowledge and culture in their own language
The Swazis who watch television are virtually inundated with information that is culturally irrelevant to them. Also, the programmes that are not made locally often reflect language, values and lifestyles, which are vastly different from those of the Swaziland community. Extreme examples of this are the soft porn movies that the DSTV channel Action X broadcasts late at night. (It is illegal to publish and distribute pornographic magazines in Swaziland).
Television should be about more than simply beaming foreign material into Swazi homes. Mass media that are available in Swaziland should have a role in helping the country to develop and contributing to social change. Instead, the foreign made programmes portray Westernized consumer culture as attractive to people in Swaziland, even though about 70 per cent of the population live below the poverty line.
What is really happening with DSTV, and to a lesser extent with the two Swazi TV channels, is that advertisers are deciding what gets shown. They want audiences with money to spend on the goods and services the advertisers wish to sell.
Where advertising becomes increasingly important as a source of revenue for media, entertainment packages of soap operas, music, and sports are central to attracting audiences. This is precisely the type of programming DSTV provides.
As a result Swaziland’s cultural values will be seriously damaged if Swazi children continue to be exposed to TV programmes with massive foreign content which do not promote Swaziland’s own cultural values. Today’s Swazi children are in danger of becoming ‘Anglo American’ in their mentality without ever setting foot in those countries, instead of identifying themselves with Swazi values and traditions.
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