by Thinus Ferreira
Pay-TV customers of StarTimes across Africa, including StarSat subscribers in South Africa, abruptly lost all of the Discovery TV channels on Monday without warning because of an unexplained and unresolved contract conflict.
StarTimes and StarSat subscribers woke up on Monday to discover that their Discovery channels - StarTimes Real Time, Investigation Discovery, Investigation Discovery French, Discovery Science and Discovery Science French - were all gone.
The end of the channels come after Discovery Inc. cut its Discovery Family channel in late-January from channel 222 on StarTimes and StarSat after just two years on the Chinese pay-TV platform even before it was supposed to go dark on 31 January.
Discovery Family went dark after the Fine Living Network (FLN), that is also from the Discovery Inc. stable, abruptly disappeared in December 2020 after more than a decade on the air on StarSat, with the move that also angering subscribers.
StarTimes and StarSat subscribers are fuming over the fact that they were only told in August, and after it happened that the channels are gone, saying they would have cancelled their subscriptions had they known in July or with a month's notice.
Discovery Inc. in response to a media enquiry, told TVwithThinus on Wednesday that "StarTimes Real Time,
Investigation Discovery, and Discovery Science will no longer be available through
the provider as of 2 August. However, lovers of real-life
entertainment can still enjoy a plethora of world-class content from
Discovery on DStv."
Discovery didn't answer why customers and viewers of its channels were not told or warned beforehand about the loss of the TV channels.
Luyanda Cele, StarSat spokesperson, told TVwithThinus in response to a media enquiry on Thursday morning that "Please note that the channels are removed due to contractual issues and
communication was sent immediately to our customer via bmail, SMS and on our
social medial pages".
On Facebook StarSat only posted a notification on Wednesday morning, long after 2 August, while subscribers say even the StarSat call centre knew nothing about the axed Discovery channels.
On Facebook when StarSat subscriber Daphne Brown asked why StarSat keeps discontinuing channels and if it's because StarTimes is not paying the distributors, StarSat said "it is due to contractual reasons and nothing to do with payment".
Nadia Crowie said "Surely someone should have known earlier, not a few days after debit orders went off and payment made. Even if we were notified, it should have been before debit orders went off or payments were made".
Nduduzo Gape said "I joined StarSat because of those channels. I am giving you one month to resolve this issue else I'm disconnecting".
Subscriber Zanele Ngcongo said "Wow, you guys are not good to your customers. You only tell today but I've noticed on Monday that Real Time was off. You need to change the way you do things".
