by Thinus Ferreira
South Africa's SABC now has a video streaming service. As the country's 85-year-old broadcaster
faces the future as a new streamer with SABC+, in order to capture a part of the pie
as a player, it will have to confront these crucial issues from its
past.
1. Late market entrance
SABC+ is what we call a late market
entrant to South Africa's video streaming sector and will have to work even
harder and do even more to stand out.
There's fashionably late. Then there's
late-late to the wedding because the car got a flat tire.
As the
"laatlammetjie", SABC+ is the latest youngest child in an already
large family and growing, comprising Netflix, MultiChoice's Showmax, eMedia's
eVOD, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+, Appel TV+, VIU, BritBox SA, VIU, TruthTV, WOW Presents Plus and MarqueeTV.
If you're watching one of them, you're not watching any of the other at the same time - and the minutes in a week available to spend in the attention economy remain the same finite 10 080.
None of them
are going to leave a single slice of the bread on the table if they can help it, in the fierce competition for users and subscribers. SABC+ will have to get in
there and grab what it can get.
Late out of the running blocks is never
a good thing.
In this case, the SABC is taking over Telkom's TelkomONE streamer
which nets it just over 150 000 registered users.
The SABC wants to grow that to
between 1 and 2 million registered users by November 2023.
In America, most
households making use of streamers are now making use of between three and four
already. As a Johnny-come-lately, SABC+ will have to jostle for position to
make a case to the average South African TV watcher and consumer as to why
SABC+ matters and should be one of their two, or three or four video streaming
services to use.
The benefit from being late to the party, is that SABC+ can learn from forerunners' mistakes to try and not repeat those - and to be careful not to make its own.
The launch
came out of left field with no big launch marketing push. A mistake.
Like
the little rabbit in Zootopia going through the new police recruit physical
test, there's nothing wrong with being small or smaller or trying to catch up from behind - you just have to
figure out how to use that to your advantage to literally scale up to get you
over the hurdles.
2. A lack of compelling content
An in-built handicap is the
metastasised perception (halfway between fact and consumer attitude) that the
SABC doesn't have any compelling content - nothing really besides its
ritualistic prime-time soaps of Uzalo, Generations, Skeem Saam, Muvhango and
7de Laan that's really worth watching or getting audiences.
Top Billing? Sorry,
no. A massive, slick and high-end produced weekly drama series? Nope. Incredible sports coverage?
Nada.
The SABC's linear TV ratings for SABC1, SABC2 and SABC3 are steadily
declining month by month for close to three years now. That same content is now
on SABC+ will little add-on.
The SABC's linear TV ratings ride on predominantly old and very mature shows, still
popular but waning, without the introduction of any new, hugely successful
hits.
Uzalo a few years back was the last one for SABC1. SABC2 doesn't have
anything else new to replace Muvhango or 7de Laan. After axing Isidingo, Top
Billing, High Rollers and several other shows, SABC3's The Estate has been a
ratings flop.
If the SABC rejuvenates its traditional TV linear offering with new
"big umbrella" general entertainment, locally-produced shows, it will automatically lead to SABC+ becoming appointment television and a streaming
destination in its own right - but that will require a real commitment to real financial investment in quality content by the broadcaster.
3. Bespoke content
The SABC hasn't given any thought
and planning - or didn't have enough time - to create unique, new and
compelling local content just for SABC+, something that's crucial to
differentiate it from other streamers and to make it stand out as a must-go-to
SABC platform.
Before eMedia Investments' launched its eVOD streamer as an AVOD
service, Marlon Davids, managing director of e.tv channels, and Helga Palmer, head of local productions, commissioned a string of locally-produced, made-for-TV
movies as well as TV series as eOriginal productions to exclusively debut on
eVOD at its launch.
With some content like Isiphindiselo hugely successful there, e.tv leveraged those
by giving them a linear broadcast run in a later free-to-air window: Win-win
for eVOD, win-win for e.tv as the same show and content spend helps lift the
tide in both oceans, drawing registered users to the streamer, and bringing in
viewers and advertising on linear.
e.tv set aside a specific multi-million rand budget just for exclusive on-demand content for eVOD.
Merlin Naicker, head of SABC video entertainment, and Lala Tuku, SABC head of local productions, have been doing countrywide roadshows the past few
months to meet and court South African producers and to say sorry for
mistreatment in the past - asking them to please come and work with and for the
SABC again.
Burnt by years of unprofessional treatment through a terrible and
mismanaged content pitching and commissioning process rife with corruption, as well as shocking and abrupt "But we have an existing contract and multiple
episodes left" show cancellations, production companies left the SABC and
absconded.
They went to the likes of MultiChoice, M-Net, Mzansi Magic and Moja Love, and have largely pinned their hopes the past few years on trying to snag one of the lucrative dangling fruits
offered by new streamers like Netflix and Showmax where content commissioning
procedures are less byzantine than at the SABC.
Two weeks ago Merlin Naicker and Lala Tuku told
producers the broadcaster is "streamlining" and improving the
nightmare of trying to pitch concepts to the SABC and content commissioning
with the lofty promise of getting back to producers "within 21 days".
That's not going to happen but at least the SABC is making the right, better
noises.
Now it needs to put money (where who knows That will come from) where
its mouth is, and commission some really compelling content that could reside
on SABC+, exclusively first, as on-demand content that could transition to
linear later.
SABC execs are taking a page from
MultiChoice's book for DStv pop-up channels and did say it plans to do specific
pop-up TV and radio channels for SABC+ like a Senzo Meyiwa murder trial channel, a holiday
channel, and others, in future. This is a great idea and unique content that will
draw new viewers and new users to SABC+ if the broadcaster is able to follow
through on this idea.
4. Marketing & PR
Very few of South Africa's media contingent covering the industry even knew that there was to be a SABC launch event for
SABC+ on a Thursday two weeks ago.
The broadcaster didn't bother to tell or invite
the bulk of the press who would usually cover a media announcement and launch
like this to its hastily arranged morning event. There were no so-called
"influencers" to hype and enhance the announcement. As a result, SABC+ didn't, as
the kids say, "trend" on Thursday.
The problem is that the broadcaster really had
one chance to go big with a streamer launch. While not a commercial company,
SABC+ - and especially since it's a late market entrant - really needed to make
a (bigger) splash last week, coming at the end of a year. It didn't.
Compared to the media launches of streamers like Showmax and Disney+ and ones gone and forgotten like Cell C Black, SABC+ didn't
create any big buzzworthy moment.
It will not serve the SABC to have
launched SABC+ and then not aggressively market it or put a real, and big money number behind a ringfenced SABC+ marketing budget to drive public awareness of it.
The SABC already lost out on a lot of what is called "earned
media" - news reports and coverage - for not having bothered to work to
get media into Thursday's room where SABC and Hisense execs were congregating (with some of whom themselves were flown in for the event).
Does SABC+ have its own publicist or publicity team?
TelkomONE definitely had. Did the SABC allocate a specific marketing team to
look after and promote SABC+ specifically from now on?
It's crucial that the SABC actively
promote SABC+ and put marketing money and expert PR people behind it to drive
marketing and publicity about it constantly.
5. Speed is of the essence
Two weeks ago Merlin Naicker said the 85-year-old SABC has an "ambitious task" to become "more faster, more agile".
If digital in media is the future, so is
speed. The SABC needs to make and executive decisions - especially around
content and operational directives - much, much quicker.
This goes for the
brick-and-mortar Auckland Park headquarters, but even more so for SABC+ as a
digital era, up-in-the-clouds creation.
SABC+ doesn't stand any chance of
success against the likes of global streaming behemoths like Netflix and Disney+
if it remains unable to pick up the pace and start running faster.
Creating content
deals - signing up producers, production companies, talent both on-screen and
behind the camera, and crafting multi-year, multi-project output deals with
producers - are absolutely crucial.
Netflix and Amazon Prime Video are already
swarming the African content and sucking up studios, production houses and
sewing up output deals, while Amazon Studios Africa is poised to go big with a
content commission spree in South Africa, and Showmax is establishing more and
more commercial relationships with up-and-coming producers.'
In the new "streaming Wild
West" that's Africa and South Africa's heated video streamer market,
especially Netflix, Amazon Studios and Disney+ are headhunting veraciously,
stealing talented and experienced video content execs from especially
MultiChoice and Showmax.
For SABC+ to shine, it unquestionably will need
experienced, skilled, versatile and very talented executives to drive an
informed and focused content approach and strategy.
The SABC will have to spend
money to attract, appoint and keep some of these available people as well. There is no way that SABC+ can
just function as a nice-to-have "add-on" without any dedicated
content and strategy executives specifically for it, to steer its future.
"Run, Forrest, run!"
6. A reason why
Why should you download SABC+ on
your mobile phone? Why should you open the app on your Hisense TV set?
The SABC
will have to figure out and explain to South Africa's existing and potential TV
households and video streaming consumers why it matters, why having and using
SABC+ is a benefit and why it will improve and better their lives.
Has the SABC
made this case? Not yet.
The BBC has found success with its BBC iPlayer
streamer because it gave UK audiences "a reason why". With iPlayer
the BBC proved to viewers why they want to pay their TV Licence fee, why they
want the BBC to continue to exist; why it's worth it to pay for the BBC to
operate as that country's public broadcaster.
7. SABC TV Licence fees
This brings us to another - and finally, more
contentious issue: The SABC TV Licence fee.
If the broadcaster is smart - and
with talk growing louder of the SABC TV Licence fee in South Africa being
phased out sooner rather than later as only 18% of TV households that the SABC
is aware of still bothering to pay - the broadcaster will have to figure out a way
to make SABC+ work to make people want to pay their SABC TV Licence fee.
Is it possible to create some
functionality where a SABC+ user who verifies or inputs a unique, valid SABC TV
Licence number or profile gets access to more content?
Is it possible to reward
SABC+ users who use the streamer with a verified TV Licence number or profile
with something additional? If smartly enacted, SABC+ could drive SABC TV
Licence compliance or uptake, making it desirable instead of a nuisance to pay
one.
