Abstract
Policymakers have promised the world when it came to the migration from analogue to
Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT) broadcasting (Galperin, 2005; Freedman, 2008), and
South Africa has been no exception to this general rule. In an attempt chart a way as an
early adopter of technological innovations in the global South (especially in Africa), the
South African government established a Digital Broadcasting Migration Working Group
in 2005 to advise on the process, whicheventually led to a national policy document in
2008 (Department of Communications, 2008). From the start, the government was
convinced that the digital switchover should not be left to the vagaries of market forces.
They wanted a transition that was markedly different from a country like Canada, which
allowed market forces to dictate the pace and manner of the DTT transition, and which
did not necessarily lead to a more efficient broadcasting system or a greater selection of
content (Taylor, 2010, 2013).