A TopTV subscriber magazine is months away. Bad news since I broke the story about TopTV's atrociously bad, incorrect, empty, out-of-sync and gibberish on-screen electronic programme guide (EPG) RIGHT HERE on Friday, and which has still not been rectified.
TopTV's unreliable, incorrect and messed-up EPG leaves TopTV's thousands of new subscribers with no other way to get accurate - or make that ANY - TV guide information for the bulk of its TV channels. Besides TopTV's on-screen EPG through the TopTV decoder, there is simply no other way for TopTV subscribers to get any TV guide information, since TopTV did not roll out a TopTV subscriber magazine from this month as DStv does on a monthly basis. Neither does the TopTV website carry any online TV guide for TopTV's channels. No TopTV channels are published by any print media in South Africa in newspapers or magazines or have so far been included in any daily newspaper TV listings or magazine guides because none have been pro-actively approached.
And I can reveal exclusively that TopTV will only start discussing the possibility of a TopTV magazine for the first time during June next month. I asked TopTV about a magazine as not only a back-up for subscribers to get their TopTV schedules, but also as a value-added service like what DStv does. ''We don't have a magazine as yet,'' Elouise Kelly, TopTV chief marketing officer tells me. ''As an interim measure we will be using a function on our website which should launch this week. This will allow subscribers to see all programming info for the channels as well as plan their viewing.''
