Asha Speckman
TOPTV, which launched as South Africa’s second pay-TV operator two years ago, has been dealt a blow to its decoder distribution network.
Pep Stores, which sold the decoders on behalf of the station, had decided to remove the decoders from its shelves citing space constraints, Mariki Schwiebus, a spokeswoman for the clothing retailer, said last week.
Speculative comments from unnamed insiders last week suggested that the decoders were not selling.
Schwiebus said: “Due to commercial reasons a business decision has been made to stop selling TopTV decoders from October 1 due to space constraints and the introduction of other exciting products into stores.”
Pep Stores, which has more than 1 000 stores, sold more than 75 000 decoders during the two years that it was a distributor for TopTV.
Schwiebus said Pep Stores would maintain a contract with TopTV “and Pep will soon be selling TopTV prepaid vouchers as part of our financial services offering”.
The broadcaster did not respond to enquiries after promising comment via its public relations firm on Friday.
TopTV decoders are available at 24 furniture and food retail chains that include Barnett’s, Checkers and Pick n Pay, according to its website.
The broadcaster suffered a blow earlier this year when the Independent Communications Authority of SA denied, on technical and moral grounds, TopTV’s bid to launch three new pornography channels.
By the end of last year TopTV had added 100 000 subscribers to reach 300 000 customers.
On Digital Media, which is TopTV’s holding company, said at its launch in May 2010 that the company would need 500 000 subscribers after three years to be viable.
The broadcaster has not enjoyed an easy foray into satellite pay-TV.
Its rival, MultiChoice, a unit of listed Naspers, manages pay-TV broadcasters M-Net and DStv, which have exclusive popular content agreements, and has a near-monopoly in South Africa.
For the year to March, MultiChoice added 684 000 subscribers to grow its overall customer base for subscription broadcasting services to 5.6 million homes.
In South Africa, customers grew by 492 000 to about 4 million. Of this growth, 293 000 new customers had bought lower-priced bouquets.
MultiChoice is rolling out digital terrestrial television services in other African countries and has completed this project in Zambia, Kenya, Uganda and Nigeria.