Broadcasting Services (Licensing and Content) (Amendment) Regulations, 2024 (No. 7)

The Broadcasting Authority of Zimbabwe, with the Minister's approval, has created a new class of broadcasting service: the Local Digital Television Satellite Broadcasting Service. It means a local satellite TV channel created by a content distribution service licensee and carried exclusively on the platform for which that distribution licence was issued — in practice, in-house channels on a pay-TV satellite platform.

A broadcasting licence may now authorise this service in addition to the classes in section 7 of the Act. Applications go through the ordinary route in section 10 of the Act read with section 4 of the principal regulations, as if it were a licence for a service named in the Act itself.

The licence lasts only as long as the underlying content distribution service licence. If the platform licence expires, so does the channel licence.

The prohibition is flat: no person may provide a local digital television satellite broadcasting service without this licence.

On fees, the new Second Schedule entry sets a non-refundable application fee, initial or renewal, of US$2 900 per channel, and a basic licence fee of US$20 300 per channel. The schedule describes that second figure both as being "for ten years" and as "per annum", which cannot both be right — a broadcaster budgeting for this should confirm the basis with BAZ before applying, because the difference is a factor of ten.