The SABC will lose up to R91.8-million in revenue if it were compelled to flight political party adverts, the Independent Communications Authority of SA (Icasa) heard on Monday.

"The estimated loss of revenue through giving up traditional advertising time, as envisaged in the draft regulations, will be between R58.8-million and R91.8-million," said Fakir Hassen, the acting general manager of policy and regulatory affairs at the SABC.

Icasa is holding public hearings on draft regulations which provide a framework under which party political broadcasts in the electronic media will be covered in the run-up to general elections next year.

If the regulations are approved, political parties will be allocated airtime to flight adverts on SABC television. According to the draft regulations, the SABC will be obliged to give political parties airtime in terms of its public service mandate on both radio and television.

But Hassen, accompanied by SABC head of news Snuki Zikalala, told Icasa that the impact of compelling the broadcaster to carry party political TV adverts would be "serious".

"It's a lot of money... Eighty percent of our revenue comes from advertising," said Zikalala. "[It will] dent our finances, badly, badly."

Zikalala added that it would not help if the SABC offered to flight the adverts in slots other than during prime time, because then political parties would not be interested.

SABC needs funding

"No-one watches between 11pm and 3am... It will be a waste of time and the political parties will agree. Unless you get funding from someone... from government. But we won't get funding from government.

Even for elections, we don't get funding from government," said Zikalala.

Hassen said the SABC was willing to "bend over backwards" to accommodate the draft regulations on radio.

"Our sound broadcasters will provide 100 percent coverage to the electorate... [but] we should not be compelled to do any PEBs [political election broadcast] on TV at all," said Hassen.

Hassen argued that the proposed regulations would not only have a negative affect on the SABC's finances, but would also fail to create a level playing field for political parties.

He said the smaller parties would not have the finances to create television adverts which would give the bigger parties an unfair advantage.

SABC worried about "smaller languages"

Hassen also pointed out that political parties would not make adverts in all 11 languages and that it would be unfair toward "smaller languages".

But Icasa councillor Robert Nkunu wanted to know why the SABC could not have come up with a more "creative solution" to its concerns.

He pointed out to the SABC that it had known about the draft regulations since 2006.

"The SABC knew this thing was coming. The SABC should have anticipated this was going to happen... We would have expected the SABC to come with a creative solution," said Nkunu.

Hassen was also told that no television adverts would amount to discrimination against deaf voters who could not listen to political party messages on radio.

"Last year, the regulator published a code for broadcasters on people with disabilities," said chairwoman Brenda Ntombela.

But Hassen replied: "It is going to affect a small minority," referring to deaf voters.

The draft regulations stipulate that broadcasting licence holders must make available four two-minute time slots every day for election broadcasts in the run-up to the election.

Political parties will be allocated airtime according to their size and level of representation in parliament.

E.tv is scheduled to make its representation on the regulations at noon.

Sapa