The old system had to be manually updated by dedicated staff in each channel. Even after the introduction of TVBMS, this parallel system was maintained, despite the duplication of effort that this brought about. Over time several alternative methods to distribute the schedules were developed. However, some media organisations were still relying on this old press tool for their information.
The antiquated server on which this tool was housed has had a fatal error and the SABC schedules have therefore not been available since about Tuesday last week. It was unlikely that BIT would have been able to re-establish the service. Therefore, some media houses have been stuck without SABC's schedule info since last week.
A replacement system was devised and commissioned some time ago, that is fed straight from TVBMS. It reportedly made sense because this would eliminate the duplicate effort. The old (and now unavailable) press tool will be replaced by this new service.
The link to this service is: www.sabc.co.za/Integration. Some of the layout in the final schedule will be changed, a menu added and the system changed to understand all characters. The date range will also be increased to provide schedules from this week to 6 weeks into the future.
