WATCH: DSTV subscribers can not choose their own channels

Mulichoice SA CEO Calvo Mawela. Picture: Nhlanhla Phillips/Africa News Agency/ANA

Mulichoice SA CEO Calvo Mawela. Picture: Nhlanhla Phillips/Africa News Agency/ANA

Published May 26, 2018

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Johannesburg - Multichoice South Africa is working on several strategies to help it deal with the “unregulated’ competition it faces from over-the-top (OTT) internet streaming services such as Netflix.

However, allowing its subscribers to choose their own channels won't be one of them.

“We aren’t open to doing that at all,” Calvo Mawela, MultiChoice SA’s chief executive told the Saturday Star yesterday. “It’s the model we’ve chosen to adopt as a company, and this is how we’ve chosen to do business.”

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MultiChoice, which operates DStv, claims it lost more than 100000 DStv Premium subscribers in its last financial year because of the competition it faces from streaming services like Netflix. This was revealed two weeks ago at Icasa’s public hearings, which was an inquiry into subscription TV broadcasting services.

Icasa is looking to address MultiChoice’s “market dominance” by further regulating the firm. However, MultiChoice has argued that if Icasa proceeds with more regulations, it will kill DStv’s business and hand the South African market to the online streaming giants.

Mawela said allowing subscribers to choose their own DStv channels in a bid to boost subscribers wasn’t viable.

“These proposals that people make are based on not knowing what’s happening,” said Mawela. “We package channels, and when you package channels, you try to capture a wider audience in terms of your packaging. In that way, you’re able to attract a number of wider viewers, so that viewership cost comes down because we are targeting a higher audience.

 MultiChoice SA’s CEO Calvo Mawela says they are getting complaints from subscribers saying they don’t repeat some of the movies as much as they would. Video by Rabbie Serumula

“Once you start giving subscribers the option to choose certain channels, the cost increases. If we only have 1000 people choosing to watch the PSL, we have to divide the cost among the 1000 subscribers, so it works out at much more.”

Canada pay TV, he said, experimented with allowing subscribers to choose their own channels, but it didn’t work. “They introduced the a la carte option where subscribers were given the choice of choosing specific channels. After realising they were paying more for the a la carte option the subscribers cancelled that option and went back to the traditional packages.”

Complaints that DStv lacked variety and showed too many repeats were also not true, he said.

Several subscribers have cited how they have cancelled their DStv subscriptions because of the lack of variety and repeats. Mawela disagreed. “If you watch DStv, there has been a huge improvement in terms of how we package channels. Actually, we're getting complaints from our subscribers saying we don't repeat some of the movies as much as they would like us to repeat them.

“When new content comes in you try to look at opportunities for different viewers to be able to get it. You can't just show it once and then bring new stuff in all the time. When you try to package it in such a (repeats) way there are opportunities for people who missed that first run to be able to catch up on it at a different time.”

Mawela added that MultiChoice had been working to try to keep up with the likes of Netflix, but it was difficult as OTTs were not regulated and “do not pay tax” in South Africa, nor broadcasting licence fees. “It’s in our DNA to be innovative and try new things and that's what we have done. If you look at the whole company, we have Catch Up, Box Office, we have launched Showmax and DStv now, and other streaming services on our platform. We continue to innovate and put out the best content that we can put out. We produce the best local content second to none in the world, in my view; our sports production is among the best in the world.

“We’ve done a lot to improve our Showmax offering. We have added it as a premium package at no extra cost to ensure people develop the habit of using Showmax; we’ll monetise it at later stage.

“We are doing lots of work on our online offering and making it more attractive to our customers.”

Icasa has given MultiChoice until May 31 to provide it with “empirical evidence” that there is a direct link between the presence of OTTs and its drop in revenue and subscriber numbers before it makes a decision on whether it will further regulate pay TV stations.

Saturday Star

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