{"id":538131,"date":"2024-05-23T19:30:23","date_gmt":"2024-05-23T17:30:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=538131"},"modified":"2024-05-23T19:32:48","modified_gmt":"2024-05-23T17:32:48","slug":"dstv-crushed-its-competitors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/broadcasting\/538131-dstv-crushed-its-competitors.html","title":{"rendered":"DStv crushed its competitors"},"content":{"rendered":"

MultiChoice crushed its competitors in South Africa through a series of shrewd business moves and by offering an excellent pay-TV service in DStv.<\/p>\n

Launched on 6 October 1995, nearly ten years after introducing its M-Net pay-TV channel, the first DStv package offered 16 channels for R175 per month.<\/p>\n

By 2000, DStv had expanded its bouquet to 60 channels and was around R300 per month.<\/p>\n

Viewers flocked to the platform as MultiChoice continued investing in SuperSport and acquired high-quality international content earlier than free-to-air broadcasters could.<\/p>\n

It also capitalised and expanded on M-Net\u2019s existing investment in local content.<\/p>\n

M-Net had launched the investigative journalism programme Carte Blanche in 1988, a block of children\u2019s programming called K-TV in 1990, and South Africa\u2019s first locally produced soap opera, Egoli, in 1992.<\/p>\n

As its subscribers grew, MultiChoice began buying exclusive regional rights to popular sports and international programming, blocking would-be competitors from accessing the high-value content.<\/p>\n

The strategy was extremely effective in sports-mad South Africa, with MultiChoice securing the rights to the most-watched rugby, cricket, and soccer tournaments.<\/p>\n

Sports fans knew that whether they wanted to watch the Olympics, the Sharks, the Boks, Michael Schumacher, Mike Tyson, Manchester United, or Bafana Bafana, DStv had it.<\/p>\n

MultiChoice also ensured DStv had something for the whole family, from dedicated kids and movies channels, to popular TV shows ranging from Top Gear to Game of Thrones.<\/p>\n

It also got into reality TV production, acquiring the rights to franchises like Big Brother and Idols.<\/p>\n

By not resting on its laurels and entrenching its dominant position, DStv seemed unassailable by the time competitors tried to take a slice of South Africa\u2019s pay-TV pie.<\/p>\n

\"Startimes<\/a><\/p>\n

In the mid-2000s, industry regulator Icasa issued several commercial broadcasting licences to companies trying to compete with MultiChoice.<\/p>\n

One of these was Telkom, a worthy contender as a monopoly in its own right. Telkom dominated the fixed-line telecommunications industry at the time, mainly because it had enjoyed a government-protected monopoly.<\/p>\n

Telkom received its commercial broadcast licence in September 2007 and started to build a large company to challenge DStv with South Africa\u2019s first IPTV service.<\/p>\n

Its ambition was to become a triple-play provider like cable and media companies in the US and UK, offering broadband, television, and telephone services.<\/p>\n

It planned to invest R7 billion in Telkom Media, with R3.5 billion coming from Telkom.<\/p>\n

By March 2008, Telkom started to get cold feet, announcing it would slash Telkom Media\u2019s funding to R2.2 billion.<\/p>\n

Telkom pulled out soon after that, selling its stake in the media company \u2014 and its broadcast licence \u2014 to Shenzhen Media Group in 2009.<\/p>\n

It would be rebranded Super5Media, but would also ultimately never launch.<\/p>\n

Another contender soon emerged in On Digital Media, which launched TopTV in 2010.<\/p>\n

By 2012, On Digital Media was in business rescue. Chinese pay-TV operator StarTimes bought a stake in the company, and TopTV relaunched as StarSat.<\/p>\n

In addition to securing exclusive rights to popular and highly sought-after content, MultiChoice also acted against any opportunity for challengers to gain subsidised entries into pay-TV.<\/p>\n

This included a highly controversial contract with the SABC, which blocked the public broadcaster from having its channels carried over encrypted digital terrestrial television platforms.<\/p>\n

A News24 GuptaLeaks investigation in 2017 also linked<\/a><\/strong> MultiChoice to dodgy dealings between then communications minister Faith Muthambi and Gupta associates.<\/p>\n

The investigation revealed that MultiChoice had lobbied Muthambi to push former president Jacob Zuma to transfer powers over South Africa\u2019s broadcasting sector to her.<\/p>\n

This was after Zuma split the Ministry of Communications in two and appointed Siyabonga Cwele as Minister of Telecommunications and Postal Services.<\/p>\n

President Cyril Ramaphosa has since reintegrated the two ministries.<\/p>\n

Upon receiving her powers through presidential proclamation, one of Muthambi\u2019s first orders of business was to declare that government-issued digital TV decoders would not include encryption technology.<\/p>\n

This was in direct contravention of her own political party\u2019s policies.<\/p>\n

The encryption issue was so sensitive for MultiChoice because it would\u2019ve allowed E-tv owner eMedia a subsidised entry into South Africa\u2019s pay-TV sector.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Faith Muthambi, former communications minister, with Hlaudi Motsoeneng, former SABC COO<\/p><\/div>\n

South Africa was busy migrating from analogue to digital terrestrial television broadcasts, and poorer households would be given a government-subsidised set-top box (STB) to allow older TVs to display the new signal.<\/p>\n

Terrestrial television refers to signals received using a regular roof antenna or \u201cbunny ears\u201d rather than a satellite dish.<\/p>\n

DStv\u2019s existing subscribers were not impacted by this migration at all.<\/p>\n

Regardless, there was much debate about whether the decoder-like STBs should include encryption technology to help government protect its subsidy.<\/p>\n

The argument was that subsidised STBs could be sold below cost price in countries using the same digital TV technology as South Africa.<\/p>\n

However, MultiChoice and eMedia\u2019s true interest was in the opportunity and threat the boxes presented.<\/p>\n

If government deployed decoders with encryption technology to every indigent household in South Africa, that would allow broadcasters like eMedia a government-subsidised entry into pay TV.<\/p>\n

Where MultiChoice had to carry the cost of decoder subsidies to encourage DStv uptake, eMedia would get a free ride.<\/p>\n

It therefore did everything in its power to block this from happening.<\/p>\n

MultiChoice denied that there was anything untoward in its policy proposals to Muthambi.<\/p>\n

\u201cMultiChoice, like other companies in the sector, regularly engages the industry regulator and government on matters that affect the broadcasting sector,\u201d it stated at the time.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis includes making proposals that may take a specific regulatory or legislative form.\u201d<\/p>\n

MultiChoice said it made many such proposals, and many were also rejected.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MultiChoice established and maintained its dominance in South Africa by offering an excellent pay-TV service and through a series of shrewd business moves.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":441746,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[85,35,475,18576,19949,22273,19097,94879,109,23363],"class_list":["post-538131","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-broadcasting","tag-dstv","tag-headline","tag-multichoice","tag-on-digital-media-odm","tag-south-african-broadcasting-corporation-sabc","tag-starsat","tag-startimes","tag-super5media","tag-telkom","tag-telkom-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/538131"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=538131"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/538131\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":538315,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/538131\/revisions\/538315"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/441746"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=538131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=538131"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=538131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}