by Thinus Ferreira
e.tv is taking on MultiChoice's DStv and StarSat with its own pay-TV service and will launch its Openview Ultra on 6 March with a gay bouquet of R75 and promising more pay-TV channels will be added.
The move represents South Africa's biggest traditional pay-TV market shake-up in decades with e.tv that also runs its eVOD streaming service, no longer content to be boxed in as a linear pay-TV channel supplier where it's often at the mercy of satellite operators.
For R74.99 per month, existing Openview viewers will be able to access Openview Ultra and its so-called "Pride" bouquet.
The Pride bouquet consists of the OUTtv and FUSE channels, featuring a variety of LGBTQI series like the GoGo for Gold reality series, documentaries, telenovelas, gay romcoms, films, and OUT originals. MultiChoice tested OUTtv that in 2018 as a DStv pop-up channel but eventually decided against it as a permanent addition.
Besides the gay bouquet, eMedia also plans to add a so-called "Spice" bouquet of two Bollywood channels which won't be available at the launch of Openview Ultra but is being finalised.
eMedia says Openview consumers will be able to do a free 3-day trial of Openview Ultra, after which a monthly fee will apply. Subscribers will have the option of cancelling the subscription at any time.
"The Openview ground-breaking innovation allows viewers to experience exclusive content at their discretion, and opens new worlds of viewing by catering to all audiences," eMedia says.
With Openview Ultra, eMedia is taking on South Africa's duopoly pay-TV market which has been dominated for decades by MultiChoice's DStv and the much smaller StarSat from China's StarTimes.
Openview Ultra as a subscription version of eMedia's existing Openview free-to-air satellite TV decoders, will function through three existing models of the existing Openview set-top box (STB).
By September 2022, Openview - growing by 500 00 activations per year - was already present in over 3 million homes across Southern Africa.
It means that enabling pay-TV functionality and giving those 3 million users the option to become subscribers, would instantly transform eMedia's Hyde Park-based Openview Ultra into the biggest traditional pay-TV rival in South Africa to the existing Randburg-based MultiChoice.
South Africa's broadcasting regulator Icasa granted e.tv a traditional pay-TV licence 16 years ago in 2007 under the banner e.Sat which it decided never to use.
Instead, it opted to become a TV channel supplier, for instance producing the eNCA (DStv 403) TV news channel for MultiChoice since 2008, and offering DStv other general entertainment channels as well.