e.tv's worse carriage deal for eNCA and the other e.tv packaged channels on MultiChoice's DStv satellite pay-TV platform - lessened by almost half - pushed eMedia Investments into a loss of R729 000 for the half year to end-September.
eMedia Investments, the TV business division of Hosken Consolidated Investments, reported in its interim results for the 6 months to the end of September that its interim revenue declined by 5% to R1.2 billion.
What contributed to the decline in revenue is increased programming spend, as well as the drop by almost half in the carriage deal income that eMedia Investments now gets from MultiChoice after signing a new carriage deal for its channels like eNCA and others to be carried on DStv.
Earlier this year eMedia Investments and MultiChoice signed a contract extension for eNCA but is now also including 5 other e.tv packaged channels from its Platco Digital run OpenView HD (OVHD) free-to-air satellite platform.
Until mid-2017 these additional 5 channels were only available on OpenView HD but has now been included in the packaged deal of the eNCA carriage contract.
eMedia Investments is however getting less money than before despite providing more channels to MultiChoice.
The carriage fee eNCA gets from MultiChoice was almost halved to R140.8 million from R266.6 million
"The decrease is attributable to the renegotiated DStv contract, which showed a significant decline in the licence fee revenue the group receives from MultiChoice for the supply of eNCA and five other channels," says André van der Veen, eMedia Investments CEO in the results statement.
eMedia Investments however did manage to make up some of this loss by growing adverting revenue by 16% from R45 million to R52 million.
Taking over the TV licensing rights from Sony Pictures of the weekday soap Days of Our Lives this year from the SABC's SABC3 that is now broadcast on e.tv also came with a hefty sticker price and saw eMedia Investments' content costs increase by 34% to R929 million.
Programming and other costs at e.tv increased by 7% to R359 million.
e.tv however did manage to grow its advertising revenue by 4% to R689 million.
e.tv was able to keep its TV audience market share basically stable, "but has seen a decline in the key revenue drivers of LSM5 to LSM7".
