by Thinus Ferreira
Is DStv dying? As millions of consumers cut the cord and say they will no longer pay for "so much more", what is happening to MultiChoice isn't unique within the entertainment sphere. Another "D" - Disney - made many of the same mistakes in America that DStv could - and should - actually learn from.
South Africa doesn't have a Disney World. But we have DStv.
Like "the Happiest Place on Earth", paying for a DStv subscription (and before that for M-Net) was - especially if you were a kid, a student, or a rugby or football fanatic - similar to a golden ticket to a Willy Wonka world of absolute wonder.
Expensive but TV bliss. Expensive but worth it.
Now, millions of TV households are cancelling DStv - not just in South Africa but across Africa.
Like Disney, DStv offered escapism at a price - a price millions of people were willing to pay monthly to escape, for a while, daily or nightly or over weekends, to get away from your life; to live in a happy, dream-like place.
Whether that place was a rugby or football field, with The Girls Next Door inside the Playboy Mansion, with the Kardashians in Calabasas or dragons in Westeros, you watched and kept coming back, and kept paying more to watch some more, again and again.
Until the dream had to end because it became unaffordable.
And because a cheaper entertainment park a bit further down the road called Netflix came along, offering fewer dreams, fewer rides but was a fine trade-off in terms of price if you kept telling your brain you don't really "need" to see the next real housewives fight or Man U play, or Sibongile and the Dlaminis.
MultiChoice is bleeding DStv subscribers in a big way and its latest half-year results make DStv look like we're in America and DStv is DirecTV, Dish, Charter's Spectrum or Comcast's Xfinity where traditional pay-TV is truly in a death-spiral.
There, the phenomena of cord-cutting - subscribers ending their decades-long relationship with traditional pay-TV companies in their millions every quarter - constantly accelerates.
It's something MultiChoice has mostly remained immune to in South Africa and in the rest of Africa. Until now.
So what happened to DStv?
Just take a look at Disney in America - and specifically what it did to its theme parks, its theme park experience, pricing, technology, and the implicit experience promise that it broke.
Disney price hikes, coupled with inflation simply made a visit to Disney World for a family ... unaffordable.
DStv price hikes - now up to two or even three within a year in some African countries have similarly forced even ardent, loyal subscribers to decide that they just can't afford it anymore.
Especially DStv Premium - that Castle of Content that always held so much programming promise - simply became too expensive the last few years while not offering enough value for the price.
It's not that Disney or DStv are expensive - they've always been - but it is that the rapid rise in price was so rapid over the past few years, combined with almost-as-good alternatives like Netflix which popped up, that caused millions of consumers to stop paying for something they've used to see as a must-have luxury.
Then what you got, got cut.
Try and talk to an actual human at DStv and see if that's possible when you have an issue or a problem. See how long that takes.
Experience how absolutely awful DStv's chat function is to try and solve something - or again to get some human in the chat box who doesn't respond and doesn't understand and actively causes much more frustration than real assistance.
Remember when you could connect to DStv as a Family with multiple concurrent streams in your own home because you ... paid for DStv?
Remember when new devices like the DStv Explora rolled out and were subsidised, TV channels on DStv switched to high-definition so you could see sport better, and great TV channels were constantly added.
Now there's only one channel allowed to be streamed, DStv Glass symbolic of innovation - got canned, while 4K remains a laughable pipedream despite promises.
Meanwhile, DStv decoders in capability fell far behind what those in the USA and UK are capable of, with MultiChoice nowadays - especially this year - much more likely to axe linear TV channels than add anything really good, great or worthwhile.
The DStv magazine guide got killed off - even removed from hotel rooms - and was replaced by hotels with a remote control that has a Netflix button.
MultiChoice gave up its entire presence in hotels - where a lot of people are for vacation - to "Netflix and chill". Guess what hotel guests press and watch now.
As DStv subscribers became even more price-conscious there really is only so far you can push a customer before they quit on you entirely. Customers feel priced out on something that once looked shiny and desirable but that turned to a perception of being too costly, for too little, for too much trouble.
Through bad and thoughtless management, who made bad and wrong decisions, Disney made the park experience worse.
Similarly, DStv - where it's 100% about what you literally see - made the what-you-see for what-you-pay experience worse, "less worthy" and reduced.
At the same time, customers also got given more alternatives. That lead to the calculation of: "If this road, that used to be the only road, is no longer so nice, let me try one of the other roads".
Since DStv subscribers are asked for feedback - which DStv apparently ignores - and with Canal+'s hungry lion eyes on the horizon, MultiChoice bosses will have to sit and be honest with themselves and ask: What has really happened to the DStv Customer Experience?
Why was what DStv Premium once offered been so diluted that customers no longer feel it's worth it, and how long before that feeling fully filters through to all the other consumer layers?
Why did DStv, with the advent of apps and connected TVs and remote controls with YouTube buttons, give up so much real estate in people's living rooms without a fight and through unforced errors?
How can DStv actively work to try to get back into people's everyday sit-and-relax environment and be their view-choice partner?
DStv has a pull problem. It's one largely self-created (with a little side-quest help from Netflix).
As ordinary South Africans continue to pull back from DStv (and on the rest of the continent) they still watch TV. They still want to be entertained. They will still pay for TV. There are just fewer of them - by the millions - choosing to now do that with DStv.
That's a massive perception problem for MultiChoice.
Disney realised you can't keep charging people more and more, cause overcrowding, not manage long queues, force people to pay for every single thing that used to be free, take away rides and stuff they used to get, and cause and add stress to customers who actually paid for an experience where they actually want to get away from stress for a few hours.
DStv subscribers no longer want to pay more and more for "so much more", for awful customer service, be forced to pay for every single thing, get TV channels and stuff taken away that used to exist and used to be free, and end up with more stress when they've paid for the expectation of just wanting to watch some good TV to get rid of stress.
Is it any wonder that DStv subscribers, in their millions - and like what happened with the other D - are saying, "it used to be good, but no thanks. No more"?
Ask any family that stopped going to Disney, and and family that cancelled DStv, why.
Their answers are the same: Too expensive now. No longer worth it. No longer what it used to be.
Those responses should serve as the guiding light to try and repair what once was, but got lost in the ride.