TopTV which wants to broadcast porn on South African television changed its application submission for three pornographic channels on a separate bouquet and now wants to show porn only during what the TV industry calls "the watershed period" - between late night and early morning.
It's a big about-turn for TopTV which in its first written application to the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa) in its second attempt to launch a porn bouquet, said that it won't be "commercially savvy" to just run the channels after and before what is known as the "watershed period".
The struggling On Digital Media (ODM) which runs TopTV, and which is currently under business rescue according to the Companies Act, applied for a second time to broadcast three sex channels as a separate bouquet.
This time TopTV wants to broadcast Playboy TV, Desire TV and Private Spice as a separate bouquet and with a rating classification of R18.
The sex channels are provided to TopTV by Playboy TV UK / Benelux Limited in England and are uplinked through SES Platform Services in Munich, Germany to South Africa.
In its written application to Icasa for it's second attempt at a separate bouquet, TopTV said that it wants the sex channels to broadcast all day long and not just during what the TV industry refers to as the "watershed period" - the time period after 20:00 and before 05:00 when more mature and riskier visual content and language content can be shown and heard on television.
"It will not be practicable to only schedule some material outside of the watershed period as all material will be of an adult nature. It will also not be viable and commercially savvy to run a channel from 20:00 to 05:00 only, as that will not be suitable and/or appealing to the majority of the audience interested in the channel/content."
TopTV has now changed its stance and wants to only broadcast the sex channels within the watershed period. In a just-issued press release, TopTV which is arguing its case in its public hearing before Icasa today, says the turnaround about restricting its porn broadcasts to just the watershed period comes "in response to considerable public inputs and feedback".
"ODM's new submission offers to restrict the broadcast of the three adult entertainment channels to the so-called 'watershed period' which falls between 20:00 and 05:00".
"We acknowledge that there is genuine public concern about the protection of children from viewing adult TV content," says Eddie Mbalo, the acting CEO of TopTV.
"Even though we have strict mechanisms in place to give parents full control over the access to these channels, as an extra precaution we have made the decision not to broadcast adult material outside the watershed period, when children are likely to be awake," says Eddie Mbalo.
The South African Film and Publication Board (FPB) tells me that "we believe this type of distribution [through television] has the potential to expose children prematurely to adult content. With pornographic content as such, people have the right to view such content, but it can only be distributed by licensed distributors at specific businesses and the law still applies in that regard."
