ANALYSIS. M-Net turning 25: How the pay TV quarter-lifer is trying to figure out its broadcasting future.

When M-Net that turns 25 this coming October, announced earlier this week that its dropping its KTV youth programming because the M-Net audience has ''grown up'' so to speak, the South African pay broadcaster touched on a truism that's already profoundly affecting its current operations across the continent of Africa and will be shaping its vision as player in the pay TV business for decades to come.

To be 25 means you're an adult but it doesn't mean you're fully grown up. Just like modern day 25 year olds, M-Net is experiencing that twentysomething crisis referred to as ''The Quarter-life Crisis'': your best of times, and worst of times, trying as hard as you can to figure this whole thing out, realizing that the past is drifting away and that you have no choice but to stay where you are or move forward.
And M-Net is moving forward.

Just like the mid-twentysomething who realizes that its no longer possible to be (and more importantly don't want to be and isn't going to be) friends with anyone and everyone anymore, but will invest your time, energy and attention in specific valued real friendships and grow those, M-Net is approaching its 25th birthday by realigning its focus regarding its channels and content, the kind of ''friend'' it wants to be in future, and making some hard but necessary decisions for its future.

M-Net is trying to figure out which of these current friendships [audiences] are important – in essence who the best friends are – are how to continue to pursue them and invest in them. Just like someone in their midtwenties, grown up, on the threshold of real adulthood, having real financial muscle for the first time in your life, still wanting to please everyone and all your friends all the time but having the realization that it won't really be possible, M-Net is charting a new course. The pay broadcaster – a kid of the eighties born in 1986 – is starting to say goodbye to its late youth years as it embraces new opportunities and with it, new possibilities.

For more click on READ MORE below.

While the greatly fatigued (yet can't opt out) South African public broadcaster is weighed down by overburdened extended family responsibilities and expectations it can't escape, M-Net has the opposite ''problem'': What to choose? What not to? Where to go? And most importantly, who to take with?

Hard to let go
Take M-Net's announcement this week of splitting the M-Net channel's signal into a different analogue and digital version from April. M-Net will henceforth do a dedicated basic separate channel for its about 150 000 analogue (mostly older) subscribers using the M-Net-only decoder. Keeping the analogue signal alive does definitely figure into the bigger corporate and technological plan for M-Net's digital terrestrial television (DTT) future. Just like a 20-something in a Quarter-life crisis however, M-Net is increasingly realizing that the broadcaster has in fact started to outgrown some erstwhile friends (analogue subscribers) that's slowly drifting away. Yet, even though M-Net knows it should actually let them go (terminate the analogue signal and force subscribers to upgrade to DStv or end the friendship) – is finding it difficult to let go.

At 25 you have a vast range of possibilities – a profusion (and often debilitating) range of choices on the positive side, but – and this is why quarterlifers struggle because of the perceived course changing permanence of it all – choices that could lock you in and shape who you become for decades into the future. What do you choose? What's the right decisions? At 25 you also finally have a bit of money. You can't buy a house, buy you can do some cool things. But not all the cool things. You have to make even more decisions. In M-Net's case the pay broadcaster has to make a multitude of decisions about its future every day, impacting revenue, future expansion and growth areas.

Not burdened by a public broadcasting mandate, the pay TV company operating in a world of burgeoing social media, a medium and business model under growing financial, piracy and competitive pressure, has to figure out the new and future commercial interest of its subscribers. M-Net is not just trying to figure out how to proceed in interacting with them in new ways but how to entertain them in new ways.

Programming wise, besides producing buzz worthy local versions of international reality formats M-Net hasn't really hit upon too many hit local series. ''Struggling'' would be too harsh a word to use when talking about the pay broadcaster's continued foray into local productions, and indeed M-Net can and should be lauded for its continuing effort and big investments in the local production industry (scale wise its doing much more than the SABC). M-Net keeps trying to do good as well as viewership pulling local television and that is commendable.

A Generation X broadcaster courting The X Factor
However as the blue M nears its 25th birthday it doesn’t have a permanent head of local productions and where it even still a few years ago under Carl Fischer went by the M-Net mantra that it's constantly strongly focused on doing new productions, pushing the boundaries of not-yet-seen shows and on the lookout for the ''next big thing'', you can count for youself at what seasons Idols, Big Brother Africa and Survivor SA (revived) stand. Not bad, but…safe. It's not that M-Net has run out of new ideas, it's just somewhat more hesitant to try than in the adolescent years as the once exciting upstart is moving to becoming establishment.

It is conceivable that M-Net that is trying to get The X Factor and is very, very close, would position this as the new ''it'' thing for the M-Net channel. M-Net - a true Generation X broadcaster, is probably contemplating moving Idols - this year also shown on Mzansi Magic (DStv 107) for the first time - to that channel permanently if it gets The X Factor, to henceforth have Idols then court a specific black audience with black winners. It's what was done with Big Brother and I wouldn't be surprised at all if a local The X Factor is announced during the live finale or the press conference at the end of the 7th season of Idols.

Operational structure wise, the almost 25 year old already went through huge reorganization the past two years into 3 distinctly separate units as part of M-Net's corporate vision to henceforth target and serve niche pay TV audiences and their special viewing interests. Specialists channels for niche audiences is clearly the new guiding principle at M-Net overall, with the pay broadcaster now trying to mimick the channel delivery of what BSkyB in Britain is doing, here in South Africa and elsewhere on the continent: streams of specialised TV content from specific movie genres to lifestyle and entertainment delivered to MultiChoice's DStv platform. M-Net is looking towards the rest of Africa and is aggressively expanding both its local production fascilities in other countries like Nigeria and elsewhere on the continent as well as upping its localized content adapted for those markets that includes sport as well as reality and scripted entertainment - later this year even a brand-new Swahili channel in Africa.

On the cusp of celebrating its quarter-life anniversary in October M-Net has grown and entrenched itself as the biggest provider of pay TV content on the African continent. However there is still much room for further expansion, growth, improvement, and innovation. Moving forward its a given that M-Net will change. Yet as any quarter-lifer embraces new beginnings, new destinies and new chapters, some precious things from your childhood are never left behind. It's a sure thing that M-Net - whatever form it takes in future - won't be stopping the magic anytime soon.