Multiview: Shortsighted or stupid?
Summary: It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that the potential for confusion is massive with a name like MultiView
I recently saw an article on Channel 24 where I found out that the powers that be intend to brand the upcoming digital terrestrial television service “Multiview”.
Multiview is a new free digital TV service which will offer viewers 18 TV channels.
Considering that Multiview is a service that will be run by the SABC and e-tv, my immediate reaction to the name was: ‘WTF?’
I am, of course, making one big assumption here and that is that Multichoice had no part in this discussion.
I can imagine the combined geniuses that decided on Multiview as a name for the service locked in a darkened room, throwing around ideas.
“Let’s call it Freeview, that’s what they call it in the UK and Australia.”
“No. We can’t call it that because people are going to have to pay for the new set-top boxes. We’ll end up in front of the advertising standards authority and we all know how terrifying those guys are.”
“OK. So Freeview is out, what about Multiview?”
“That sounds great. Let’s break out the single malt and celebrate.”
Except for one big issue. If I told you that there was going to be a new TV service called Multiview, any sane person would assume that this was a new offering from Multichoice.
Maybe a way to stream TV programs from your PVR to a remote device across the internet.
I mean we have Multichoice already and it has a product called Xtraview. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that the potential for confusion is massive.
Add to that what would happen if the service were to launch under the Multiview moniker.
I would predict a sudden influx of calls to the Multichoice call centre asking inane questions about why their DTT box has suddenly stopped working.
Given the reputation that Multichoice’s contact centre already has, I can’t see that they would relish the idea of fielding thousands of irrelevant calls every day.
Assuming, of course, that Multichoice didn’t have anything to do with the choice of name, I can see the hyenas over at Multichoice’s legal department rubbing their hands and relishing the opportunity to issue any number of threatening letters and maybe even get to court where a judge may tell the SABC and e-tv that they made a huge mistake.
I don’t think it would be a long hearing, just long enough for the judge to get out a wooden ruler and smack the SABC and e-tv over the knuckles and reprimand them for wasting everyone’s time.
The final kicker is that not only is the Freeview.co.za domain name taken (by some arbitrary individual), but Multichoice owns the multiview.co.za domain name and has since 2008.
There is, of course, the possibility that Multichoice is in on this plan, but I can’t see the benefit of it to them.
In fact, the most logical explanation, if you eliminate blatant stupidity, is that this was dreamed up by the legal departments of the various broadcasters who are tired of sitting around the office all day and would really like to have a good, old-fashioned smack down.
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