Swaziland’s only ‘independent’ television station Channel Swazi (Channel S) has been boasting about new equipment it has installed in its studios.
Congratulations to them, but what a pity that the standards of their programmes remain so awful.
For those who haven’t been paying attention the Times Sunday newspaper reported (13 January 2008) that E6 million (just under one million US dollars) had been spent on upgrading facilities.
Channel S is a controversial television station run by an equally controversial man Qhawe Mamba.
Swaziland is not a democracy and the government on behalf of the monarchy keeps a strong control of broadcast media. However, in 2001, in an effort to mislead the outside world that Swaziland allowed freedom of expression, the government allowed Channel S, to begin operating within the kingdom.
King Mswati III supported Channel S, because he wanted to show that his regime was democratic and respected human rights, but this illusion was soon exposed when Channel S had its offices raided by police after it screened a report deemed too critical of the king. The authorities immediately reined in any hint of independence at Channel S.
The criticism of the king was an aberration, because Mamba has always been excessively loyal to the monarchy. For many years he managed to hold down two jobs. Even while he was head of Channel S he was employed full time by the Swaziland government-controlled station, Swazi TV.
During this time Mamba was a ‘praise singer’ for Swazi King Mswati III. A ‘praise singer’ is exactly what it sounds like and Mamba would travel across the world following the king on his travels and reporting back for Swazi TV on the king’s deeds and singing the praises of the king to anyone who would listen.
What Mamba and Channel S presented was hardly independent news. But we expect this from broadcasters in Swaziland so there is nothing new here.
Today Channel S can jump up and down with excitement all it likes about the new equipment, but it doesn’t alter the fact that the programmes the channel produces are extremely bad.
Most of the programming on the station isn’t even produced in Swaziland. The programme schedules are full of cheap imports (endlessly repeated), mainly from the US.
But, of course, the new equipment will be used on homegrown shows. Certainly, something needs to be done about the way Channel S produces its news. Here’s what they put out last Thursday (17 January 2008) on their English language news programme.
The programme started with the newsreader facing the camera, stumbling her way through a script of the news. I hope viewers had not been drinking too much because they would have suffered a bout of motion sickness as the camera swayed first to left and right and then up and down. A photograph illustrating the report she was reading first appeared on screen, then disappeared. Then a blank space appeared where the photograph should have been. And this was only the first minute of the programme.
The first news report didn’t appear. When it did, the picture froze and the sound came on… and then went off. The camera showed the newsreader looking like a startled dog caught in the headlights of a car.
To cover up the mistake, Channel S went to a commercial. But even that didn’t work. So it was back to the news report. Once that was over it was on to the second report. But this report covered pictures that had just been shown in the previous report.
I’ll put Channel S out of its misery here and not tell you about the rest of the 30-minute programme.
Regular viewers of Channel S news programmes (if there are any) will know that what I have described is not a one-off occurrence. The news is like this every day. Channel S should stop worrying about new equipment; it should start hiring people who know how to do their job.
Channel S operations manager Mduduzi Hleta is quoted in the Times Sunday saying that ‘almost half a million’ people in Swaziland watch the channel. This is certainly untrue. Half a million people amounts to roughly half the population of Swaziland (adults and children) and since more than two thirds of people in Swaziland live in abject poverty on less than one US dollar a day it is highly unlikely they can afford to watch television.
I leave it up to you to speculate why Channel S tells lies about its viewing figures but in truth until the quality of its programmes improves dramatically it will be lucky to keep half a dozen viewers let alone half a million.
See also
TELEVISION MISUSES CHILDREN
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