ABSTRACT
The digital migration for terrestrial television has been one of the most important, but costly and complex programmes. The move has been driven internationally, primarily by scarcity of spectrum and the need to free this up for new mobile and telecommunication services. South Africa’s Department of Communications (DOC) promised digital ‘switch-on’, namely, the start of the digital migration on a number of different dates, starting from 2008. The original promise by the Communications Minister in 2008, endorsed by the Cabinet, was substantially different. At the beginning of the migration process the South African government adopted more substantive critical political economy perspectives on issues of diversity and technology. The dominant liberal pluralist school celebrates the growth of market and commercial media. The emphasis of liberal pluralists is on the issue of pluralism i.e. ensuring increased numbers of media entities, channels, programmes and content provided by the market.
