{"id":85015,"date":"2013-09-01T14:53:33","date_gmt":"2013-09-01T12:53:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=85015"},"modified":"2013-09-01T14:54:39","modified_gmt":"2013-09-01T12:54:39","slug":"free-satellite-tv-business-model-explained","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/broadcasting\/85015-free-satellite-tv-business-model-explained.html","title":{"rendered":"Free satellite TV business model explained"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a title=\"Platco\" href=\"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/vb\/showthread.php\/547417-Platco-Digital\">Platco<\/a> will not be making money from advertising, but from charging free-to-air channels for carriage on its subscription-free OpenView HD satellite TV platform.<\/p>\n<p>This is according to <a title=\"Maxwell Nonge\" href=\"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/vb\/showthread.php\/550623-Maxwell-Nonge\">Maxwell Nonge<\/a>, managing director at Platco Digital, a sister company to <a title=\"E-tv\" href=\"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/vb\/showthread.php\/313641-e-tv\">E-tv<\/a> that has said it will launch OpenView HD during October 2013.<\/p>\n<p>Nonge said that OpenView HD will be a very low cost setup and that the channels themselves make money from advertising while Platco just charges them for carriage.<\/p>\n<p>They will be able to keep their costs down because they decided to go with a horizontal model, which Nonge said is somewhat different to other satellite operators.<\/p>\n<p>Platco won\u2019t interact directly with the platform\u2019s viewers at all, he explained, as their distributors will source and sell decoders (also called set-top boxes) and deal with warranties, installers, and customers.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTo manage a subscriber on pay TV costs a lot of money,\u201d Nonge said. \u201cHundreds of millions. That\u2019s the key difference in our business model.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/vb\/showthread.php\/398597-Ellies-Holdings\">Ellies<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/vb\/showthread.php\/548409-Space-TV\">Space TV<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theswitchgroup.co.za\/\" target=\"_blank\">Switch Digital<\/a>, and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.abtstb.co.za\/\">ABT<\/a> are the initial four distributors Platco said it has partnered with for the launch of OpenView HD.<\/p>\n<p>Set-top boxes will be co-branded by Platco and the distributors and must conform to a minimum specification that Platco sets.<\/p>\n<p>The minimum specification includes support for high definition (HD), but not personal video recording.<\/p>\n<p>Nonge said distributors pay a small royalty fee for the box, but at R1\/box, he explained it\u2019s not instrumental to their business model.<\/p>\n<h3 id=\"related\">More satellite TV news<\/h3>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/broadcasting\/84763-freevision-satellite-tv-announced.html\"><strong>Freevision satellite TV announced<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/broadcasting\/84387-dstv-explora-hd-pvr-decoder-launched.html\"><strong>DStv Explora HD PVR decoder launched<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/broadcasting\/83737-free-satellite-tv-for-sa-channel-genres-pvr-plans.html\"><strong>Free satellite TV for SA: channel genres, PVR plans<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/broadcasting\/83207-openview-hd-free-satellite-tv-decoder-details.html\"><strong>OpenView HD free satellite TV decoder details<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/broadcasting\/83175-free-satellite-tv-specs-and-other-details.html\"><strong>Free satellite TV: specs and other details<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>How does OpenView HD expect to make money?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":82799,"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_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[20701,2092,18911,35,20837,20709,20533,20699,20537],"class_list":["post-85015","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-broadcasting","tag-abt","tag-e-tv","tag-ellies","tag-headline","tag-maxwell-nonge","tag-openview-hd-ovhd","tag-platco-digital","tag-space-tv","tag-switch-digital"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85015"}],"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=85015"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85015\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":85441,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85015\/revisions\/85441"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/82799"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85015"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85015"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85015"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}