by Thinus Ferreira
As more details come to light of Canal+'s aggressive buyout of MultiChoice, one of the inconvenient truths is that South African TV news channels like SABC News, eNCA and Newzroom Afrika will effectively belong to, and be paid for, by a French company.
That ka-ching, ka-ching sounds you're not hearing - since it's electronic payments and not for us, the bourgeoisie, to be either privy to or to be perturbed by - is the payment of millions of rand to sets of lawyers and financial advisors in offices in North America, Europe and South Africa to get Canal+ to the finish line of gobbling up MultiChoice.
The intent of South Africa's string of regulations and Electronic Communications Act (non-existent in other African countries) is to prohibit a place outside of South Africa - like a foreign company - from owning or controlling a local media company like the traditional satellite pay-TV operator MultiChoice.
Forget the legalese of a planned deal.
In practical terms, that's exactly what will happen if the aggressive buyout of The MultiChoice Group by France's Canal+ goes through, which will effectively give Randburg City a Parisian flair.
The lawyers' plan is for Canal+ to carve out the problem child part - MultiChoice South Africa (holder of that pesky poisoned chalice called a South African satellite pay-TV broadcast licence) - and to spin it out as an "independent" company for now called "Licence Co".
Sprinkle with some required BEE and work the scales to get the shareholding in terms of voting rights to exactly 20% - precisely what the regulators demand - and voilà!: DStv dressed with homegrown African flair displaying the season's latest new French colonial style.
If you've ever watched L.A. Law, Suits or Succession, you'll know that there are rules and laws for everyone.
Then there are those who want to build on the Liesbeek floodplain, a megamansion closer to the sea, or try to keep tarnished student accommodation open or build a pipeline called Keystone. Where there's a will, there's always a quarrel of lawyers standing by to make it happen for you - at a price.
Important questions remain that neither Canal+ CEO Maxime Saada or MultiChoice Group CEO Calvo Mawela have yet answered.
One of these is the inconvenient truth - to borrow a phrase from Al Gore - about how, after a Canal+ takeover of MultiChoice, the totality of South African pay-TV news will effectively be paid for by a French private company.
It is MultiChoice that annually pays millions of rand for and is responsible for the creation and ongoing existence of the South African public broadcaster's SABC News (DStv 404) TV channel, eMedia's eNCA (DStv 403), as well as Newzroom Afrika.
The SABC News TV channel literally exists solely because of the money that MultiChoice pays to the public broadcaster for its operational expenditure.
Without the MultiChoice money - already a media ethics debate if you want to get into it since MultiChoice is a private South African company paying a public broadcaster to specifically do a news service - there will only be SABC News as a SABC division with TV and radio bulletins.
Without MultiChoice moola there won't be enough money for SABC News as a separate linear TV news channel running 24 hours a day.
It will turn 17 years old this year and started out as the eNews Channel and MultiChoice is also paying eMedia to make and run eNCA for DStv exclusively.
The same goes for Thokozani Nkosi and Thabile Ngwato's 5-year old Newzroom Afrika, specifically and exclusively commissioned and paid for by MultiChoice for the DStv platform.
Remember the "Gupta-television" ANN7 that was later rebranded as Afro Worldview?
When MultiChoice decided in 2018 it was over for the channel on DStv, Afro Worldview couldn't and didn't live on because it's the MultiChoice money - what we call a "channel carriage agreement" fee - that funds the expensive operations of running these linear TV news channels.
While MultiChoice doesn't interfere in the editorial content of these TV news channels - and insiders whisper that they've already been given lip-service that new owner-to-be Canal+ won't interfere editorially in news decisions and coverage - the inconvenient truth remains that every news media worker is mindful of who their media owner is.
What would the French make if they were suddenly told that MultiChoice would now own and be paying for French TV news channels like France24, Canal+'s CNews, or TF1's LCI (La Chaîne Info)?
Besides South Africa, MultiChoice also pays channel carriage fees for the existence on DStv, of localised TV news channels in other African countries.
Will the TV news channels on MultiChoice's DStv in South Africa and other African countries - when paid and funded by Canal+ - remain as they are?
Will they self-censor to align with a new media owner? Will Canal+ simply remove TV channels like it had done in West Africa to appease governments like in Guinea in 2023?
With their liberté, egalité and fraternité the French would never be fine with majority foreign ownership of their TV news.
So why is South Africa in the Canal+ news coup as part of Canal+'s corporate takeover of MultiChoice simply saying c'est la vie?
