TopTV's separate, yet rerun movie channels are still separate and individual TV channels and can be counted as such, even though the content is 100% rebroadcasts.
The Advertising Standards Authority of South Africa (ASA) said in a ruling following a complaint, that TopTV can count its separate time-shifted TV channels as separate channels on its bouquet offering, even though the content remains exactly the same.
While MultiChoice has no time-shifted TV channels on its DStv bouquet, TopTV has some of these so called time-shifted channels with "+1", "+2", "+12+ and "+24" channels which are very common on pay-TV platforms around the world. The exact same line-up of programming as on an original channel would always start one hour later, two hours later, or 12 or 24 hours later on these channels.
On Digital has the Top Movies +2 (TopTV 101) and Top Movies +24 (TopTV 102) channels on the TopTV platform. On these channels movies always start 2 hours later and 24 hours later than on the original Top Movies (TopTV 100) channel.
The ASA received a complaint saying that TopTV advertising 9 movie channels are misleading since the Top Movies +2 and the Top Movies +24 channels are merely duplicates.
In ad advert headlined "Take a defining journey with 9 movie channels on TopTV" TopTV also advertised Top One (TopTV 150) as a movie channel and not a general entertainment channel. TopTV admitted that this was a mistake.
The TopTV ad also included Star Gold as a movie channel, but that channel is only available on a separate subscription to the Indian TopTV bouquet. TopTV admitted that the advert was incorrect.
The ASA asked South Africa's National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) for help and clarification regarding the time-shifted channels issue.
The ASA said in its ruling that the channels, although duplicates, are separate channels, since a subscriber would be seeing, at any given point in time, different movies on the various time-shifted channels.
"While the Directorate accepts that the complainant would have preferred three distinctly different TV channels with different content, the opinion from the NAB appears to suggest that this is a common practice," the ASA says in the ruling.
"The Directorate also accepts that this would ... potentially allow subscribers who were not able to record it, to still see their preferred movie, only at a different time or date."
