Coronavirus: MultiChoice makes SuperSport 1 and SuperSport 7 channels available to lower-tiered DStv packages; StarSat says its TV channels are free on its app.

by Thinus Ferreira

Pay-TV in South Africa is starting to following the lead of overseas satellite subscription television services as the global Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic grows with MultiChoice that isn't yet offering free weeks of service to DStv subscribers as others are doing but that is making premium SuperSport channels available to lower-tiered bouquets.

MultiChoice has made some of its channels freely accessible on its DStv Now streaming platform, while TV channels can also be watched for free on StarSat's app.

Pay-TV services worldwide are grappling with how to make up for the content - especially sport but also other general entertainment - that subscribers have already paid for but that isn't happening anymore due to cancellations and postponements due to the novel coronavirus pandemic.

Sky's Sky Sports is allowing subscribers to freeze their Sky subscriptions while Viaplay from the Nordic Entertainment Group operating in the Scandinavian countries has reduced the subscription fees on all of its sports packages.

In Germany Sky is giving all its subscribers its Sky Cinema and Sky Entertainment packages for free for the next month.

In France Canal+ announced this week that it is making its service free for two weeks. "Canal Plus goes free for everyone on all set-top boxes. For our subscribers we are opening up the access to all our channels - cinema, series, youth and documentaries," Maxime Saada, Canal+ chairman and CEO said.

Canal+ is also doing the same across Africa in all African nations where it operates where anyone with a Canal+ decoder will be able to access all channels until 30 April 2020.

On Thursday MultiChoice made the SuperSport 1 and SuperSport 7 channels available to lower-tiered DStv subscribers until 30 April 2020.

SuperSport 1 that is only available to DStv Premium subscribers can now be accessed by DStv Compact and DStv Compact Plus subscribers as well. SuperSport 7 can now be watched by DStv Compact Plus, DStv Compact, DStv Access and DStv Family subscribers as well.

SuperSport 1 has programmed the ESPN acquired "30 for 30" documentary series which has been showing since this past Monday.

MultiChoice is also offering a selection of the TV news channels carried on DStv for free to any South African viewer on its streaming DStv Now platform, along with the People’s Weather, SuperSport Play, PBS Kids and Channel O music channel.

Some older library episodes of the series Igazi, The River, Isibaya, Binnelanders, Suidooster, and Die Ware Naarheid are are accessible.

MultiChoice has also made CNN International (DStv 401) available to DStv Family and DStv Access subscribers. Africanews has launched on DStv channel 417. 

The Da Vinci (DStv 318) channel has been added to DStv until the end of May and ViacomCBS Networks Africa's Nickelodeon (DStv 305) has been made available to DStv Compact, DStv Family and DStv Access subscribers until 14 April.

StarTimes told TVwithThinus in response to a media enquiry that StarSat's online streaming platform, StarTimes On, is available to all South Africans "with severalnews, kids, educational, sports and entertainment TV channels to view for free, as well as plenty of video-on-demand content".

"Even without subscribing to StarSat's pay-TV account customers can have access to basic and critical information of the current Covid-19 pandemic".

One of the best things about Cell C's new streaming service, black, is its strong, impressive carousel of TV news channels, several carried in HD.

If you thought that MultiChoice had locked up the status quo on DStv as far as the Rubik's Cube of linear TV news channels are concerned more than a decade ago, a very pleasant and unsuspecting surprise awaits with the strong, impressive and well-balanced set of TV news channels assembled on Cell C black.

Cell C's newly launched subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) streaming service, black, offers linear TV channels - something that Netflix, Naspers' Showmax and Amazon Prime Video do not.

Quite interestingly, the linear TV channels include a set of TV news channels, which seen in the totality of this offering, actually comes very close in rivaling the TV news channel offering provided by MultiChoice on DStv.

For Cell C black to have assembled this many TV news channels - several of which get an above average grade in terms of news content, news spread, on-air look and production values - gives black a very high score on its TV news offering for an out-of-the-box, just-launched service.

It shows how bad TopTV (now StarSat) was when it launched and had a paltry news offering, with Cell C black that shows how it is possible to put together a decent linear TV news channel offering even in the face of competing pay-TV services.

Granted, TV news channels do not play as big a factor in the overall unique selling proposition of a pay-TV service like lets say, general entertainment and sport channels do, but for this TV critic at least, TV news channels are as much and closely watched and tracked, and are as important.

Keep in mind that the FOX News Channel, also available on StarSat from China's StarTimes Media SA and On Digital Media (ODM), is carried on Cell C black but that it is blocked - unless you pay another R99 per month to get access to all of the FOX Networks Group Africa (FNG Africa) supplied channels.

Cell C black offers a very impressive line-up of TV news channels - several of which are streamed in high definition (HD).

(It also means that Cell C black has more TV news channels in HD than on DStv!)

Cell C black carries BBC World News (501), FOX News Channel (502), Al Jazeera (503), euronews HD (504), its new Africa sister africanews (505), Deutsche Welle (506), France24 (507), TRT World HD (508), Russia Today HD (509), Bloomberg HD (511) and CNBC Africa (512).

Weirdly Cell C and Cell C black hasn't bothered to say a single thing about its news channels offering to the media - something that is actually a very strong selling point.

This TV critic had to activate the service and start scrolling through the linear TV channel offering on the blackBOX to discover channels like TRT World - and to have a jaw-dropper moment when I saw that it streams in HD, just like Bloomberg and Russia Today.

With this offering, no big international news event or some big Africa news event will happen without a user of Cell C black not being able to watch and keep up with all the news about it.

BBC World News is already carried on DStv, StarSat and OpenView HD (OVHD) from eMedia Investment's Platco Digital.

Al Jazeera and Bloomberg (but not in HD) are already carried on both DStv and StarSat.

DStv also has Deutsche Welle and France24 but only on special language packages, and also carries Russia Today (but not in HD) and CNBC Africa.

StarSat also has FOX News Channel and France24.

It's striking that Cell C worked to get the Turkish English-language TRT World on its service, as well as several channels in HD.

It feels weirdly wonderful watching Bloomberg and euronews and TRT World in crystal-clear high definition and to think that this is being watched on a big-screen TV set ... but is being streamed through data rather than coming through a satellite dish.

Noteworthy is that Cell C black decided to place BBC World News first as the frontload news channel, just like MultiChoice did with DStv, and is also the case on StarSat and OpenView HD.

Does it mean that every pay-TV service considers BBC World News the most proper international TV news channel of record?

DStv had euronews but dropped it. It means that Cell C "exclusively" for the moment carries euronews, africanews and TRT World.

In fact, Cell C black will forever hold the footnote as being first to ever make the africanews and TRT World news channels available as linear TV channels in South Africa on a pay-TV service.

Yet another pan-African TV news channel, africanews, launches across Africa; euronews' new African sister channel now streaming live for free online.

Yet another pan-African TV news channel, africanews, launched across the African continent today at 17:00 with africanews that can be watched not only on TV in some African countries (South Africa excluded) but is also streaming for free in SD or HD on its website.

Africanews, broadcasting its TV news channel in English and French and anchored in its Pointe Noire studios in Congo-Brazzaville, is an offshoot of the European euronews that MultiChoice carried on DStv and then dumped in late 2014 after 6 years.

With Sabido and eMedia Investments' eNCA (DStv 403) channel that gave up on self sourced, on the ground reporting in Africa in 2015, and with the Nigerian-based Arise TV news channel that abruptly imploded and went off the air in January, true pan-African channels like africanews are looking to find audiences who want to see and hear first-hand reporting on what is really happening in various African countries.

africanews will primarily be competition for China's CCTV News (DStv 409 / StarSat 266), as well as for the Lagos anchored TVC News (also streamed live on its website) available on StarSat channel 270 and on DStv in some countries.

Interestingly MultiChoice doesn't currently provide any true pan-African TV news channel for DStv subscribers in South Africa like TVC News or africanews.

Funnily enough, africanews in its look and on-screen presence (OSP) blatantly copies TVC News' look and colours of yellow and black.

Also not stated but very obvious is how africanews is hilariously using South Africa for the heavy lifting in its glossy africanews promo video.

It's South African places, cityscapes, buildings, people and news events that show up most prominently and takes up the most space in its glossy promo video to sell africanews' coverage of the continent and to give Africa a "progressive Western" type look, especially as far as infrastructure is concerned.

africanews kicked off with a staff of 85, representing 15 nationalities, doing rolling live news coverage and will be doing news magazine shows like Football Planet, The Global Conversation, Timeout Africa and daily focused segments on entertainment and culture and business news.

News blocks will also be segmented, for instance The Morning Call between 06:00 and 10:30 with Hannane Ferdjani and Robert K'Odingo, The Network and Business Africa.

Veronica Narkwor Kwabla is africanews deputy editor.

africanews, funded through a mix of distribution and carriage agreement income, advertising and production revenues, looks to expand its language offering in future but is launching across Africa with English and French.

"It all began with the recognition that the rising African continent is an incredible source of news and that there is a great pool of talent that lacks a quality media environment," said Michael Peters, CEO of euronews and africanews.

"The question was simple," said Michael Peters in a "press conference" launch that was broadcast today on the channel and on africanews' online video feed.

"Was it like about doing like everyone else, meaning launching euronews Africa, or whether its about doing something totally different - africanews."

"africanews is the biggest bet no-one has ever done in the industry and the only stupid guy who decided to launch a new brand which is nuts - euronews. Can you imagine the amount of money, of time, of attention that you need to build a brand like euronews."

"And my decision is to say, I won't use the euronews brand like all the others are doing. I'm creating a new brand that will become the sister brand of euronews. This is a bet that no-one has done in the industry," said Michael Peters.

"We want to implement a media organisation called africanews that will be the voice of the African continent in Africa, and the rest of the world."

"africanews is here to give an African perspective about news, whether its African news or world news. This is another bet. What is a pan-African perspective? We have the same problem in Europe.What is a pan-Europe perspective?"

"You have a lot of African media who are pan-regional, rather than pan-continental. So you have a lot of pan-regional media who are extremely strong in the Francophone side of Africa, or strong in the Anglophone side of Africa, or the West of Africa, or the East of Africa."

"But until now there is no one real pan-continental brand that is able to speak to people in at least French and English and I hope soon in other languages. So we try to offer to the viewers, the consumer, a real pan-African view," said Michael Peters.

"This [africanews] is not the project of European people trying to impose any European views on the market."

"africanews will have to make money. The business plan is to be break even in 5 years time. For the launch of today we already have advertisers who trusted us.

BREAKING. euronews to launch a new Afrocentric 24-hour TV news channel, Africanews, as a new sister TV news channel in 2015.

euronews (DStv 414) has announced that the 24-hour European-based English 24-hour TV news channel seen in South Africa on on MultiChoice's DStv, will be launching a new Afrocentric sister news channel named Africanews in 2015.

Africanews will cover African news and the African continent more in-depth and will be headquartered in Brazzaville in the Republic of the Congo. Together with Africanews as a TV channel, there will also be the website www.africanews.com.

Africanews will be run by 40 journalists and technicians based in Brazzaville, as well as correspondents spread across Africa to gather and report Sub-Saharan African news.

Africanews will be financed by advertising and will broadcast in English and French, with plans to include other languages such as Portuguese, Arabic and Swahili later.

Africanews plans to adhere to the same editorial charter as euronews to maintain its editorial integrity and independence. euronews and Africanews will share news.

The agreement was signed on Saturday in Brazzaville between Michael Peters, CEO of euronews, and Jean Obambi, the managing director of Télé Congo.

"Our strategic and highly ambitious project will not be a mere African 'window' made by euronews, as most international news channels do, but rather a fully-fledged Pan-African network, with editorial choices made by Africans for an African audience," says Michael Peters.

The project is backed by US journalist and expert in African affairs, Stephen Smith an American journalist and expert in African affairs and who previously worked for French titles Libération and Le Monde will help in creating Africanews as a new TV news channel.