TV CRITIC's NOTEBOOK. The time has come for the SABC to deliberately do something it has never done in its 82 year history: Go black-on-air on purpose for a day to have the public reaffirm its crucial reason for existence.

The time has come for the depleted, out-of-cash and crumbling South African Broadcasting Corporation to deliberately do something that it has never done in its 82-year history: go black-on-air for a day.

As the over 5 000 SABC staffers are unsure if they're going to get paid at the end of June - with the South African government and Stella Ndabeni-Abrahams, the minister of communications,