ICASA and Radio Pulpit negotiations fail

ICASA and Radio Pulpit negotiations fail, review application continues

The attempts by Radio Pulpit and the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA) to resolve the dispute on a broadcasting licence for the Western Cape out-of-court have, unfortunately, been unsuccessful.

On the 7th of May 2009 Radio Pulpit submitted a Review Application to the High Court to have the decision of ICASA reviewed or set aside.

After the Review Application was served on ICASA, the Authority proposed to get a process in motion to settle the matter out of court. This proposal was made on the 15th July 2009.

Numerous attempts by Radio Pulpit to get the settlement process in motion were consistently derailed by ICASA and this course of events brought Radio Pulpit to the conclusion that ICASA was not acting in good faith.

The essence of the settlement process proposed by ICASA was that ICASA would appoint a two-man committee to reconsider Radio Pulpit’s Licence Application. Furthermore ICASA undertook that this committee would consist of board members that hadn’t previously been involved in the consideration of Radio Pulpit’s application. It soon became apparent, however, that the committee members who ICASA intended to nominate, have been previously involved in the case of Radio Pulpit and it also became clear that they have in fact voted against the approval of Radio Pulpit’s application. Based on this information which came to light, Radio Pulpit decided that it cannot place its destiny in the hands of a biased committee.

A further condition of ICASA’s settlement offer was that, pending the decision of the two-man committee, Radio Pulpit’s review application had to be withdrawn on the basis that each party will carry its own costs.

Radio Pulpit’s review application deals with various grounds for review, with particular reference to ICASA’s policy that Community Broadcasters must be geographically bound with regard to the area of their transmissions.

A withdrawal of Radio Pulpit’s review application would effectively deprive Radio Pulpit of the opportunity to obtain a fair and objective ruling from the High Court on the various grounds for review that are dealt with in the review application in respect of which the two-man committee wouldn’t rule against themselves in the process which was proposed by ICASA.

The ongoing dispute regarding the Western Cape transmitter has been strongly fuelled by unfounded and erroneous reasons from ICASA. The first of which being that ICASA classified this transmitter as a commercial transmitter; while during the past 7 years no commercial broadcaster applied to use this transmitter and while Radio Pulpit’s application has been rejected three times by the Authority in the past three years. Another reason that was put forward as motivation for the denial of Radio Pulpit’s application was the scarcity of frequencies. This is also an unfounded reason because it is a well known fact in the broadcasting industry that only 3 out of te 19 available medium wave frequencies in South Africa are currently being used.

Given the history of this application and the most recent developments, Radio Pulpit is left with only one clear option, which is to proceed with its review application to the High Court.