Douglas Mills

Deputy Director General: Technical

1950 to 198x

Douglas Mills

Douglas "Dougie" Mills was born in 1926, graduated from Witwatersrand University in 1949 and started working for the SABC in 1950, as a workshop mechanician.

As Planning and Development Engineer: FM Services, he was responsible for creating the SABC FM Radio network. The project commenced in 1960 and was completed in 1967. It consisted of 127 transmitting stations in which over 500 transmitters were installed.

He represented the SABC at various International Conferences, presenting papers at International Conventions in Hamburg, Brussels, Montreux, London and Sydney. He also chaired sessions at the International Broadcasting Convention in London several times.

Douglas Mills was the last technical leader of the SABC who was truely an engineer. Those that tried to follow were politicians, having little in depth technical knowledge.

I first met him in 1971 when he interviewed me for a job, I was an engineer at RTV (Rhodesia Television) at the time. He convinced me to join the SABC, although the SABC did not have a TV service. I was however given the assurance that if the SABC did go ahead with the introduction of a TV service I would be on the team. On joining the SABC a few weeks later I was told of the SABC plans to introduce a TV service in 1976. I was one of the first two people hired to work on the SABC TV project, the other being a colleague of my at RTV, Phil Slack.

I have many memories of him, the one that I remember best was being invited to the home of Anton and Charlotte Philips in Eindhoven, Netherlands. The guests were Douglas Mills and his wife Frances, Phil Bartel, Peter Bretherick (SA Philips) and myself. Frances was given a silver carriage pulled by horses, Phil and I were given Dutch paintings.

Brian Horn (SABC)

Dougie Mills in his official capacity at the SABC was directly responsible for many millions of Rands expenditure in equipping and building new studio complexes at the advent of television. This entailed a detailed investigation of television systems the world over and basically the BBC philosophy was adopted. Concurrently the network distribution required building which was also overseen by Dougie.

The successful radio and broadcasting operations and development were major achievements requiring exceptional skills and management which required to be provided by an exceptional engineer. Dougie Mills was such a man.

Derric Wilson (Telequip)