MEDIA RELEASE

08 May 2008

SABC NEWS–LAUNCH OF THE SABC NEWS AGENCY

SABC news launches a news agency to provide news and current affiars content to clients

The launch of the SABC News Agency today (08 May) is an exciting initiative from SABC News, which will see the organisation making its extensive news and current affairs content available for sale to a diverse range of clients.

Speaking at the launch function in Sandton, Mr Gab Mampone, Acting Group Chief Executive Officer (GCEO) of the SABC, stated that it was an obvious next step for the organisation to offer its content in a format packaged to meet the specific needs of its targeted client base.

“As Africa’s leading news-gathering and packaging organisation, SABC News has immediate access, on a daily basis, to a vast amount of exclusive footage, both video and audio. With a strong presence of SABC News teams across South Africa, the rest of the continent and internationally, we are in the fortunate position to be able to gather and deliver unique content about Africa and the world, with a strong African flavour and perspective,” says Mr Mampone.

“Since SABC News produces hundreds of daily news bulletins for both radio and television in the country’s eleven official languages, we are able to offer content in all these languages to prospective clients, both quickly and accurately. With the recent launch of the 24-hour SABC News International offering, content for its daily news bulletin in French will also be included in the SABC News Agency offering.”

With immediate access to this content, the SABC News Agency will offer its clients a choice of subscription packages and will also be able to fulfil ad-hoc requests on demand.

Some of the services that are included in the SABC News Agency’s opening offering, include:

• The 24-hour SABC News International channel, either as a complete news and current affairs channel, or specific segments or programmes of the schedule;
  
• Tailor-made productions of news bulletins and/or current affairs programmes originated by the SABC News department;
  
• Archived news footage and current affairs programming (from the SABC’s extensive Archive Library);
  
• ‘On the scene’ live content directly to broadcasters and media organisations; and
  
• Direct selling of SABC Radio and Television news bulletins.
  

The initial content available for sale as raw or packaged video and/or audio footage comprises:

• Main news coverage of the day;
  
• Human interest stories reflecting politics, society, sport and arts and culture;
  
• Interviews with newsmakers and personalities;
  
• Text content - short, medium or feature-story in length;
  
• Audio and visual content that can be pre-edited with relevant images and selected natural up-sounds; and
  
• Requested raw footage - video and / or audio.
  

Clients intending to make regular use of the SABC News Agency offerings will be afforded membership from a range of subscription services, depending on their specific needs and regular requirements. Costs for ad-hoc material or once-off requests such as itemised news content on a special project (i.e. the 2008 Zimbabwe elections), footage from current breaking news or archived programming for example, will be negotiated as a once-off fee depending on the complexity of the material requested.

Potential clients that could make use of the services available from the SABC News Agency, include: news organisations; independent and community-based broadcasters, both radio and television; film and documentary makers; media owners; advertising, marketing and PR agencies; production houses; corporate clients; and government departments and agencies.

“The launch of the SABC News Agency formalises a service which SABC News has been offering on a more ad-hoc basis in the past. We are confident that there is a need for a service of this nature, to provide news and current affairs content with a strong African perspective. And, having established the SABC News organisation as a world-class news service, we are now in the position to extend this offering to other parties,” concluded Mr Mampone.