I cannot overemphasise the importance of a well-funded and functioning public broadcaster. It is especially important in exposing kids to the world. And sport is an important part of that. I was reminded of this by the Dubois v Wardley boxing match this past weekend, and how I simply had no interest. I realised that this has been the case for with boxing for a while now. This, I found odd, because as a kid, I was very interested in boxing. I used to watch Blow by Blow religiously on Sundays. Then one day, it just stopped. And for years, we simply had no serious boxing exposure on SABC. You had to go to a mate’s house and catch it on DSTV. And that’s when boxing fell away for me. This made me realise that pretty much all the sports I’m invested in — football, rugby, cricket and F1 — used to be aired on free-to-air television. The SABC of the 2000s had all of these! Today, you get zero F1, very little cricket, no premier club rugby, and you have to wait for some obscure slot on Friday night if you want to see some boxing; and in 2018, you couldn’t even watch Bafana. Imagine! But you will get shows about dating during prime time. This is terrible for the vast majority of South Africans who don’t have access to subscription television. These okes have really collapsed important institutions.