by Thinus Ferreira
Discovery Inc. on Tuesday announced that it's rebranding its dplay video-on-demand (VOD) service in the United Kingdom as discovery+, relaunching it as a tiered-subscription service, and said that it will be making it available for a year in Britain to subscribers of the Sky pay-TV service.
Discovery through its South African PR agency, M&C Saatchi Group SA's Razor PR, on Thursday last week with less than a week's notice suddenly invited media to a virtual media event set for Tuesday.
On Tuesday morning Razor PR abruptly informed media standing by for the planned announcement that the event and announcement have been cancelled and said that it will no longer be taking place. There was no press release regarding the discovery+ announcement afterwards.
Discovery also made no announcements and gave no indication as to whether discovery+ would also become available on MultiChoice DStv pay-TV service in South Africa and across sub-Sahara Africa where several of Discovery's TV channels are carried as linear TV channels.
discovery+ will carry catalogue content that is a collection from Discovery's 13 pay-TV and free-to-air TV channels like the Discovery Channel, TLC, Animal Planet, Investigation Discovery (ID), Discovery Science, Discovery Turbo, Discovery History, Quest, Really, Quest Red, HGTV, Food Network and DMax.
After 12 months, Sky subscribers will be able to add discovery+ to their Sky bill.
The discovery+ subscription tier will have a monthly fee of £4.99 (R106.45) or a discounted annual fee of £29.99 (R640) for a limited period. This will become a standard annual price of £49.99 (R1066.43) in the United Kingdom.
In the United Kingdom the discovery+ app will be integrated into the Sky Q platform alongside existing subscription video-on-demand services like Netflix and Disney+ in the way that MultiChoice plans to do with its new DStv Explora decoder that it wants to roll out towards the end of 2020.
Discovery says that it will roll out discovery+ on additional devices and platforms in 2020 and 2021.
James Gibbons, Discovery executive vice president and general manager for the UK & Nordics regions, in a statement, says "We’ve just celebrated our best quarter ever for audience share, and buoyed by that success are excited to announce the launch of discovery+, to fuel the rapidly evolving demand for consumers to stream content at a time and on a device of their choosing".
"The home of real-life entertainment will satisfy consumers' growing appetite for premium unscripted entertainment, from food and homes to motoring and adventure, and will complement the streaming services already available in the market."
