That would be George M. Coetzee, Group Secretary of Naspers Media.
As it seems, it was his brilliant idea to invest millions in pay per view porn channels on satellite TV, only to loose all those millions because South Africans, although they do love their porn, are not willing to pay for it.
It was also his idea to start two new channels, the 24 hour project fame Voyerism service and the soon to be opened "Africa Magic" channel, which will show us indigenous vilagers of Rwanda or some such east African backwater, dancing topless and beating drums, painting mud huts, etc.
Obviously, to afford airing two new channels and to compensate for millions lost to premium rate XXX action that never materialised, one has to cut costs somewhere. Removing a channel here and there probably helps with that.
In South Africa, the geek community is not given the respect or reverence it deserves. Probably because we don't buy the useless, arbitrary garbage that most TV advertisers try to peddle to us.
Naspers want to make money from DStv and all the other brands they controle, so they will always try to get as many advertisers to try selling as many utterly useless products as they can manage. Since geeks don't buy utterly useless products, there was absolutely no point in advertising on the Sci-Fi channel.
I imagine George might sound somewhat like a Forangi when addressing his share holder meetings, here is a hypothetical address he might deliver as to how they will maximize their profits and recoup the losses made with the porn fiasco:
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No advertising, no profit in hosting the channel, so, we'll delete it and use the money we save to cross subsidise soft gay porn, called Rugby, being broadcast on seven dedicated channels to the South African closet community every weekend during winter.
We'll also create an utterly pointless channel with 24 hour mindless content which draws the mentally retarded teenage population of South Africa by allowing them to watch 16 delinquents, from the far flung corners of the continent, at all hours of the day and night, as they do aerobics, sing, talk utter nonsence, sing, eat, sing, have sex, shower, have sex and sleep.
Then, on this channel, we'll invite the bottom feeding, scum sucking, criminal, advertising industry of South Africa to peddle items of absolutely no practical use whatsoever to the mindless teen market, who often neglect to take one vital item when visiting any store or shopping mall, their cerebrum.
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(I'm sure I've used that cerebrum comment before. - Podo)
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We'll use the profits we generate from exploiting the hapless teens to hide the millions we lost trying to sell porn to the South African market, who all told us they wanted the porn, but were never willing to pay for it. We still don't understand why, we had some really nice hard core stuff lined up on our premium rate XXX pay per view channels for "mature" viewers.
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As a side note, I was also quite disgusted when, at the end of last year, DStv decided to pull most of the DMX channels playing Jazz content and replaced them with such marvelous offerings as "Trendzzzzz", "Hot Traxxxxxx", "Groooooff Lounge" and "Uhban Beeht", saying that they had to adapt the audio offerings to better address the needs of the "market".
Incidentally, at the same time they pulled the plug on Sci-Fi last night, they re-initialized all our decoders. I was watching until the bitter end and just noticed it rebooting. Since then, they have been using the top part of the DMX screen to sell products from Crysler.
I will never buy a Crysler vehicle, just because they support these money hungry vampires, who are not only guilty of culturally depriving South African viewers, but are also generally disrespectful to South African geeks. This can not be tolerated.
Willie Viljoen
Web Developer
Adaptive Web Development
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