by Thinus Ferreira
Canal+'s MultiChoice is getting rid of another one of its video streaming services months after it axed Showmax and has ripped away and ended its GOtv Stream mobile application across all of its operational African markets without any explanation.
The GOtv Stream was launched in December 2023 to give subscribers a digital streaming alternative, in the way that DStv Stream is the alternative for DStv subscribers.
GOtv is MultiChoice's digital terrestrial television (DTT) pay-TV version, targeting lower-to-middle-income households across Africa who don't need a satellite dish installation but get a few TV channels with a decoder and an antenna.
GOtv Stream was available in the African markets of Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, Uganda, Zambia, Namibia, Malawi and Mozambique, and besides the pay-TV channels on a package, also allowed and included the streaming of a country's free-to-air TV channels.
Up to 4 devices could use a GOtv Stream account, but streaming was only allowed on one device at a time, meaning no concurrent streams, and it blocked casting.
GOtv Stream was launched in Nigeria and Zambia in December 2023 and then in other African markets as a free, value-added feature for active decoders, allowing MultiChoice's GOtv subscribers to watch live TV channels and catch-up content on their mobile devices like phones and tablets through streaming.
In a notification, MultiChoice gives absolutely no explanation for dumping GOtv, telling GOtv subscribers to watch on their TV sets using their decoders.
"GOtv Stream has been discontinued. You can continue enjoying the channels included in your active GOtv package on your GOtv decoder," MultiChoice says.
The GOtv Stream app was removed from Apple's App Store and Google's Play Store on 21 October.
The GOtv Stream shutdown directly follows a period of massive structural change within the group since the French media giant Canal+ took over MultiChoice, with Canal+ focused on aggressive cost-cutting, offering staff severance packages, realignment of various brands, reducing brand, package and decoder options and getting rid of loss-making and underperforming operational cost centres.
Canal+ dumped the Showmax streaming service in March, followed by the recent restructuring and repackaging of the various DStv bouquets, first in South Africa in mid-September and two months later in the rest of sub-Saharan Africa.
