You're seeing it here first.
I'm the first journalist and the only TV writer in South Africa who can give you the first and exclusive look inside the very heart of the pay TV platform On Digital Media's (ODM) operations at TopTV's headquarters in the Woodmead office park in Johannesburg.
Also I saw everything, got unrestricted access and TopTV were willing to, and indeed did take me everywhere in their expanding nerve centre, I myself consider some of what I saw as propriety information for the pay TV upstart and will not reveal those photos.
For my exclusive pictorial look inside TopTV, click on READ MORE below.
TopTV's head office and broadcasting centre is located at 28 Saddle Drive in the leafy Woodmead office park in Woodmead, Johannesburg. The multilevel brick building I can be first to reveal, is not fully TopTV occupied with On Digital Media actually waiting for some tenants on the ground floor and to the left of this front entrance to vacate the space, which TopTV will then take over as well.
A soft blue hue permeates TopTV's walk-in customer care centre (with a somewhat dramatic backdrop) where TopTV subscribers can get help. This is still front of desk and accessible by anyone.
This is TopTV's call centre, massively expanded, outsourced and upgraded the past few months. Queries are fielded from potentially interested, irate and enquiring TopTV subscribers and they also handle technical matters. TopTV's call centre is massive and as you can see, it stretches far into the back. It has in terms of physical number of call centre operators now surpassed MultiChoice's call centre.
On Digital Media's office space is largely an open plan layout with some glass-fronted separate offices for high-level TopTV execs. The multi-floor office area with strict sectionalized security and access control is loosely grouped and divided by business units for instance technical training, admin, online guide content generation, billing and finance and its evident that its still very much an evolving and dynamic corporate social environment and adapting to how different departments are interacting with each other. Some things here are novel for a pay TV operator in South Africa in terms of organizational structure but I consider it proprietary information so I'm not going to reveal that for now.
If TopTV has a heart, this would be it. This is the most secure and top secret area of On Digital Media. I went through these doors where a clinical array of multiple data servers hum in a deathly silent, almost hermetically sealed glass encased section as part of TopTV's state-of-the-art technological broadcasting hub.
TopTV's final control room is smaller than others I've been in. Keep in mind that TopTV's commercial operations is only just over 6 months old and operates less than 60 active channels to monitor. From here TopTV broadcast technicians constantly check and monitor various channel feeds and broadcasting quality.
