MultiChoice CEO Mark Rayner says DStv remains hard at work at driving down repeats and rebroadcasts across the various DStv channels - one of the biggest complaints from subscribers - while viewing and use of the DStv Now service has "surpassed expectations".
On Thursday Mark Rayner addressed the media at MultiChoice's DStv media showcase held in the cinema auditorium at MultiChoice City in Randburg, Johannesburg.
As part of his presentation, Mark Rayner told the press that MultiChoice remains committed to not just reducing old content across DStv TV channels as part of an increased focus to reduce repeats, but has also been putting a lot of focus on improving scheduling to make it easier for viewers to watch shows.
MultiChoice is also pro-actively working to create new ways for DStv subscribers to find the content that's available that they might want to watch, through creating and implementing better content discovery mechanisms.
"We're making pro-active moves to limit DStv repeats; complaints have been coming down nicely," said Mark Rayner.
There's been a strong focus at MultiChoice the past few months to reduce the number of repeats and rebroadcasts of content across various TV channels on DStv's platform and to help viewers find new programming.
With a lot of work that's been done to reduce repeats on the various M-Net packaged channels for DStv, Mark Rayner said that the focus on reducing repeats resulted in an increase in the viewership and ratings of the M-Net (DStv 101) channel for instance.
And it's not just M-Net.
MultiChoice has also been having ongoing discussions with the distributors of third-party supplied TV channels for DStv's platform who have been urged to reduce repeats where they're not working - even in instances where they still got good ratings.
A repeat problem that has been addressed for instance has been old Top Gear episodes from BBC Worldwide shown on a channel like BBC Brit (DStv 120), with DStv subscribers who complained that they had been forced to watch the same old episodes over and over.
"Sometimes I pity the TV channels that get a call from Aletta Alberts [MultiChoice's head of content] and her content team. Aletta has argued vehemently with the BBC for instance over repeats of old Top Gear episodes in particular," said Mark Rayner.
He said that DStv subscribers' use of MultiChoice's over-the-top (OTT) service DStv Now "has surpassed expectations".
