Back to Index

National broadcaster under fire
MISA-Zimbabwe
March 08, 2006

Zimbabwe Broadcasting Holdings (ZBH), the state-controlled national broadcaster, has come under fire from the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Transport and Communications for non-performance.

The committee has ordered that ZBH goes on a restructuring programme to restore quality programming.

This follows a tour of Montrose Studios which houses Spot FM radio in Bulawayo, a subsidiary of ZBH. During the tour, the chairperson of the Committee, Leo Mugabe told Rino Zhuwarara, ZBH chief executive officer, to strategise on ways of improving quality programming and broadcasting for both television and radio.

"We are sure that the unbundling process was rushed. A lot of things did not go well and we want to set the tone for correction," said Mugabe referring to the commercialisation of the then Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation (ZBC) into ZBH, a holding company with six subsidiary companies.

The commercialisation of ZBC and creation of ZBH was undertaken in 2002 during the rein of former Information Minister Jonathan Moyo. The unbundling exercise resulted in the retrenchment of 500 employees, among them, experienced broadcasters who were replaced by inexperienced personnel.

"You cannot replace experience … there is a problem in terms of presentation and content. We are saying find a way to bring back those experienced people," said Mugabe.

Most of the experienced broadcasters sacked by Moyo migrated to South Africa, the United Kingdom and United States where they are manning broadcasting stations such as the Voice of America’s Studio 7 and SW Radio Africa in London and various other Online publications.

The loss of experienced broadcasters and other key personnel coupled with poor programming has seen advertisers shunning ZBH’s subsidiaries due to a drop in audience numbers and fear of compromising brand names due to the political interference at the national broadcaster.

Meanwhile, losses in revenue have resulted in viability problems for all the subsidiary companies with some failing to pay salaries.

By the second week of March employees at Spot FM had not received their February salaries while those at Newsnet were threatening to take the company to court over salary disputes.

Visit the MISA-Zimbabwe fact sheet

Please credit www.kubatana.net if you make use of material from this website. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License unless stated otherwise.

TOP