The South African lockdown has left the media sector in a shaky state
New research finds that lockdown and its regulations have had a devastating effect on the South African media.
The effect of the lockdown and set regulations has had a “devastating effect” on the media industry, as it faces job losses, the closure of print publications and the looming threat of widespread retrenchments.
This according to the research by South African National Editors’ Forum (SANEF) on journalism during the lockdown.
Without advertising revenue, the news industry has been left “desperately looking for new ways of sustaining itself while audience demands for timely, credible but free news surges.”
A plunge in advertising, which varied from an estimated 40% to 100% led to most media houses to suffer financially.
“The first and most visible casualty was the magazine industry with the closure of two magazine publishers. At the one 97 jobs were lost, and up to 250 at the other.“Away from the limelight, small, independent, hyperlocal print publications were also ravaged,” the Sanef research stated.
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Neither the regional and national newspapers of the biggest publishers nor broadcasting was immune to the plunge in advertising.
The research found workers at big media houses were forced to take salary cuts of up to 45% and temporary lay-offs were widely implemented.
However, the research also found at the same time as advertising revenue dropped and media houses faced a financial crisis, the demand for accurate news from credible sources, online and in broadcasting, increased.
“The average audience for Zulu language TV news on SABC, the week after the national disaster was declared, increased by 40% and Xhosa news audiences rose by 60%.”
Sanef said the biggest upside of this dark period has been the massive surge in traffic to credible online news sources.
“Traffic to news websites increased by 72% in March, while these sites saw a 44% growth in unique browsers.
“Many news websites saw double-digit growth in their audience numbers, with News24, Business Insider, The Citizen, Fin24, SABC and EWN growing their traffic by more than 50% in March.”
Sanef said the emergence of media houses from the crisis will depend on the speed of the economic recovery and an increase in advertising revenue.
Economists have predicted the economy will shrink by at least 6% and 16% in the worst-case scenario, which could be the biggest economic contraction in South Africa’s history.
According to Sanef, the crisis has shown the need for thinking about emergency funding for the news media in the short term and sustainable funding models as it adapts to the new digital realities in the long-term – and the world after coronavirus.
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