Seven years since it launched as a free-to-air service, e.tv now plans to extend its Openview satellite-TV service and to launch Openview Plus in October this year as a video streaming service in South Africa, as well Openview Connect within a few months as a new internet broadband service for consumers.
Openview Plus will carry eMedia's Openview channels and content as a direct-to-consumer offering funneled through the internet, and will very likely be available as a bundled-offer together with Openview Connect that eMedia plans to launch as a new broadband connection service.
No specific launch date for Openview Plus is known, nor pricing, but eMedia Investments wants to expand and augment its existing Openview satellite-TV footprint as soon as possible into the streaming service arena where it will compete with the likes of MultiChoice's Showmax, Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV+, Vodacom's Video Play and some smaller services like VIU that are all available in South Africa.
After launching Openview in 2013, eMedia and e.tv now want to get into and carve out a space in the still small but rapidly growing video streaming consumer market in South Africa, before the already overcrowded market becomes even more congested with offerings.
Several others international streamers like ViacomCBS Networks' Paramount+, Disney's Disney+, and WarnerMedia's HBO Max are not yet available in South Africa but are likely to launch and join the OTT fold in time.
While South Africa's public broadcaster hasn't launched an OTT service for the SABC but likely will in future similar to the BBC's iPlayer, MultiChoice just launched Showmax Pro as an upsell-offering that bundles Showmax with SuperSport content, and plans to offer streamers like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video on its new DStv Explora Ultra decoder.
Khalik Sherrif, eMedia Investments CEO, says in his CEO report in the latest 2020 eMedia Holdings annual report that "by October 2020 the group will launch its own over-the-top (OTT) offering called Openview Plus".
According to Khalik Sherrif, "Work on this offering is happening in earnest as this report is published".
The Openview satellite-TV service that is now available in 2 million TV households across Southern Africa carries self-packaged channels besides e.tv like eExtra, eMovies, eMovies Extra, eToonz, eReality, eRewind and eAfrica with channel carriage agreements for some of channels that are also available on the platforms of pay-TV operators like DStv and StarSat as the South African branded affiliate of China's StarTimes.
Some e.tv content are also licensed to the VIU streaming service which will become a direct rival for Openview Plus, and it's not clear how launching Openview Plus might affect that content availability, with eMedia that might elect to keep its premium locally-produced soaps and series for itself.
It's also not clear whether Openview Plus will be a subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) model where users will have to pay to watch, or if it will go the advertiser-funded "freemium" route of NBCUniversal's just-launched Peacock streaming service in America where consumers have to watch a number of adverts per hour.
About its plans to launch Openview Connect as a new broadband internet service - a utility service that will help to carry and funnel its Openview Plus as a content service - Khalik Sherrif says it will expand eMedia's technology offering and target South African households that don't have internet fibre connections yet.
"Openview Connect will be an advancement in the technology-based offerings of the group. Openview Connect is set to launch in the next few months," says Khalik Sherrif. "The target market
for this offering is homes in South Africa that have no access to fibre as yet."
On Monday TVwithThinus asked eMedia in a media enquiry to please shed some more light on Openview Plus, what it is and will entail, confirmation of the October launch date, whether it will duplicate and mirror the existing satellite-TV Openview, and what it might offer additionally.
eMedia's marketing and publicity executives didn't respond with any answers.
