What South Africa's viewers have been asking for is now happening in India: Pick and pay only for the individual pay-TV channels you want.

A quiet but dramatic change is coming to India with something that South Africa's pay-TV subscribers have been clamouring for: From 1 February India's satellite pay-TV customers will get to pick and only pay for the TV channels they want - although there are some catches.

The idea or hope is that pay-TV subscribers in India will be paying less for their monthly pay-TV subscription bill when they only choose the TV channels they want and pay for those.

That, however, might not necessarily be the case and the regulatory move is more about improving "openness and transparency" about the price of pay-TV services - something that the change will do, than making pay-TV subscriptions cheaper.

According to reports, in a move that will have a far-reaching impact for pay-TV viewers and pay-TV operators in India, the country's regulator is forcing all pay-TV companies to publish prices of individual pay-TV channels, and to allow pay-TV consumers to pick only the channels they individually want, and to then only pay for those.

In Canada a similar regulatory move by the CRTC in 2016 was an epic failure when that country's broadcasting regulator ordered pay-TV companies to provide consumers with a limited bundle of main TV channels, and in 2017 ordered them to make an option for individual pick-and-pay TV channels available.

Since the introduction of the so-called a-la-carte option instead of the so-called bundling of channels into pay-TV packages, Canada's pay-TV subscriptions have been in decline (further fuelled by the growth in video streaming services like the arrival of Netflix).

India's broadcasting regulator, is now mandating similar sweeping changes from 1 February in that country - something that South African pay-TV subscribers have also asked for, but that companies like Naspers' MultiChoice (that runs the DStv and GOtv services in South Africa and across sub-Saharan Africa) have said is not possible to do or to provide.

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has not just ordered that country's pay-TV operators to provide the pick-and-pay of individual TV channels as a new system option to existing and potential pay-TV subscribers, but has also ordered pay-TV companies to list upfront the price of every TV channel.

TRAI is going even further and although India is a free-market consumer economy, has ordered a cap on the maximum price per TV channel a pay-TV operator will be allowed to charge - Rs19 or R3.78 per month.

TRAI says the new pick-and-pay system for the TV channels pay-TV users want will "free" viewers in India from having to pay for a specific set of TV channels in a bouquet or package in the way that MultiChoice, China's StarTimes/StarSat, Deukom and others in South Africa and Africa have sold traditional pay-TV subscriptions.

There are several small print caveats, however.

India's pay-TV subscribers should get ready for the listicle bill. Similar to hospital, hotel and restaurant bills, India's pay-TV subscribers are going to hit pay-TV subscribers with itemised billing.

It does mean bigger transparency for every purchased line-item with customers able to see exactly what they're charged for but also the opportunity for pay-TV operators to add additional charges for items and services that previously were lumped in somewhat for "free" or as part of an overall cost.

For instance: It won't be possible to pick and pay for just one TV channel. Every pay-TV subscriber will pay from the outset for a basic package of 100 standard definition (SD) free-to-air TV channels. Those 100 channels will come with a base cost called a monthly "connection fee".

It also means that receiving free-to-air channels through pay-TV in India will no longer be free.

Beyond the basic 100-channels bundle, pay-TV subscribers will be able to pick and add channels individually, each at a different cost, but no channel allowed to be more expensive that the maximum fee for an individual channel set by the regulator.

After reports that pay-TV costs will rise, TRAI in a press release admits that India's pay-TV subscribers will pay less but that it's from the understanding that a pay-TV household will also have and want a reduced number of TV channels. TRAI says consumers will pay less because they will decide to have less TV channels.

TRAI worked on a model of 50 TV channels, saying "more than 90% of TV homes view/flip 50 or lesser number of channels".

"Therefore any analysis that keeps 250 or more channels for pricing of monthly tariffs, creates a false impression."

"If a consumer chooses the channels which he really watches, then he will be paying a lesser amount compared to what he's paying as of now."

Will watching pay-TV in India get costlier? Well, not from the beginning, and not immediately, and also not if a consumer chooses only a few channels. Pay-TV operators are already working on offering and building in steep discounts to maintain current pricing levels and to prevent any bill shock during and after the switch-over.

But over time - and only time will tell - once heavy discounts expire or are phased out, monthly pay-TV bills in India could possibly increase. Consumers who also opt for a lot of TV channels will pay more.

Also to keep in mind is that the administration systems and admin costs of running and implementing numerous different customer channel choices, as well as paying for channel carriage agreements in order to have those potential channels available as a choice for potential picking by consumers, will add a big financial burden to pay-TV operators' operating costs bottom-line.

These are costs that pay-TV companies, like any business in the business of making a profit for shareholders, will pass on to customers.

Deutsche Welle launches new multimedia debate project and TV show, The 77 percent, for Africa's youth.

The German broadcaster Deutsche Welle carried on MultiChoice's DStv (channel 446) and the Deukom pay-TV platforms in South Africa has launched a new debate platform for Africa's youth, The 77 percent, to debate politics and other current affairs issues impacting them across the continent.

The 77 percent, an online multimedia project that started on 4 December, will include a TV show also called The 77 percent on Tour, presenter by Deutsche Welle presenter Edith Kimani.

The "77 percent" in the title comes from a World Bank report noting that 77% of the people in Sub-Saharan Africa are younger than 35 years old.

By 2050, around 1.8 billion young Africans will be attending school, studying and looking for jobs.

Yet, while they make up three quarters of the population of the African continent, their voices are not always heard.

"The 77 percent will serve as an established, go-to platform," says Claus Stäcker, head of Africa programming at Deutsche Welle (DW).

Over the last 13 months, DW, in cooperation with African broadcasting partners, has held townhall debates on the subject of migration in Abidjan, Accra, Bamako, Banjul, Conakry, Dakar, Jos and Niamey.

"The response from both the public and the media was enormous, as was the desire from young people for more information and dialogue. We want to continue that conversation," says Claus Stäcker.

Edith Kimani is currently reporting on the situation of young people in Ghana and her home country of Kenya.

"Until now, Africa hardly seemed to understand itself," says Edith Kimani. "But thanks to social media, more and more people are coming together."

"I realise what it means to be young, proud and African,” said Edith Kimani.

The 77 percent, funded by Germany's Foreign Office, will be presented in six different languages – Amharic, English, French, Hausa, Kiswahili and Portuguese and will debate the current political situations across Africa.

A weekly radio broadcast, 77 pourcent – nous les jeunes d’Afrique, is already being broadcast in Francophone Africa. The English version will premiere in January 2018.

"We want to listen to Africa's young majority and give the people a platform for debate," says Claus Stäcker.

6 proposals & their impact on ordinary pay-TV viewers: How SA's broadcasting regulator, Icasa, wants to break up MultiChoice's dominance.

After years of South Africa's broadcasting regulator failing to ensure proper competition within South Africa's pay-TV market, the regulator has now come up with 6 ideas as part of a new inquiry to try and break up MultiChoice's dominance - each of which will have an impact on ordinary pay-TV consumers.

The Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa) has released a new discussion document as part of a new inquiry into dismantling MultiChoice's pay-TV market dominance in South Africa.

South Africa currently has Naspers' MultiChoice running DStv; StarTimes South Africa and On Digital Media (ODM) running StarSat that launched in 2010 as TopTV; and Deukom that launched in 2012 as pay-TV services.

With 6.36 million DStv households, MultiChoice is by far the biggest under the 16 million households in South Africa in 2016 of which 80% have access to television.

MultiChoice has a 98% share of subscription television broadcasting homes, while StarSat has dropped from 200 000 subscribers to 60 000 and Deukom has around 4 000 South African subscribers.

While any of the pay-TV operators as well as free-to-air and public broadcasters can bid for, pay and sign any content - including exclusive content agreements like sports rights - only MultiChoice and subsidiaries like M-Net and SuperSport are predominantly willing to sign long-term and expensive content agreements.

Telkom however notes that "the monopoly position that was enjoyed by MultiChoice for a long time has ensured that it forges long-term, exclusive relationships with content suppliers, making it difficult for new entrants to make substantive inroads into the market".

South Africa has no digital terrestrial television (DTT) subscription services yet since the South African government and the department of communications has been dragging its feet for over a decade with the country's botched digital migration process.

In the discussion document entitled "Inquiry into Subscription Television Broadcasting Services", Icasa is asking South Africa to comment on the proposals, with people and institutions having until 31 October 2017 to do so.

Written responses should be emailed to subscriptioninquiry@icasa.org.za and people can call Refilwe Ramatlo at 011 566 3251/3125.

Icasa says the inquiry is to determine "whether there are competition issues in the sector", saying it "has not yet reached a conclusion on the existence of any competition problems in the context of the subscription television broadcasting sector in South Africa".

Icasa says South Africa's pay-TV industry "remains highly concentrated" and that "contestability in the market appears to be limited by high barriers to entry, brand loyalty and high customer switching costs".

From page 87 in the discussion document, Icasa lists 6 possible "pro-competitive licence conditions" that the regulator could impose.

Each of these however - and not spelled out in the discussion document - comes with a big impact to existing pay-TV subscribers and ordinary South African consumers paying for television.

Each of the following 6 proposals, if enforced, will have a huge impact for DStv subscribers for instance.


1.Shortening exclusive contract periods
Icasa notes that pay-TV operators enter into long-term contracts for buying premium content because of the transaction costs involved in going to market on a regular basis.
Long-term contracts reduce transaction costs, negotiation costs. Icasa notes that the European Commission considers that contracts of longer than five years raise concerns. "While the South African market may be different from the European market, it may be useful to consider possible lessons from Europe."

Impact: Shortening exclusive contract periods could make rights more widely available. But if a pay-TV operator has to pay more due to shortened content contracts, the cost of the higher contracts will be passed on to the end-consumer: the pay-TV subscriber and ordinary pay-TV viewer.


2.Introducing unbundling
The so-called "unbundling" of content rights, like sport rights involves offering the rights to more than one buyer, usually making them available on different platforms.
The European Commission has adopted an approach that sport rights must be sold on open tender; the rights must be "unbundled" allowing more than a single buyer; there must be no excessive exclusivity (a term of 3 years being regarded as a general norm); and that there must be no automatic renewal of contracts.

Impact: It's not clear that even if rights are offered on resale, that 2nd tier takers would take it, or be able to afford it.
It's also bad for the end-consumer, the ordinary pay-TV viewer who will have to subscribe to many different services, buying different decoders and paying multiple monthly subscription fees to get access to different blocks of content.


3.Imposing rights splitting
Right splitting requires an owner to split content rights and sell them to more than one broadcaster.
Icasa says the advantage of rights splitting, with splitting rights into many packages is that it facilitates access by new smaller entrants who may not have deep pockets to bid for the full package of rights.
Icasa says that on the downside consumers may find it difficult to subscribe to various different service providers in order to get access to specific sport matches for instance.

Impact: A big consumer cost obligation is placed squarely on the ordinary pay-TV subscribers - especially ardent fans - who will have to subscribe to multiple different pay-TV services to literally "get a whole picture" and see everything of one type of content. Imagine some soccer you really want to see being available only on Operator A, and some soccer you really want to see only being available on Operator B because nobody is allowed to buy everything of one type of thing.


4.Imposing wholesale must-offer
According to Icasa the British broadcasting regulator Ofcom in 2010 imposed wholesale must-offer rules on BskyB’s Sky Sports.
Sky Sports was forced to make rights available to other distributors at "regulated" prices. Ofcom dumped this obligation in 2014.
Icasa says "wholesale must-offer" might still be a possible and feasible remedy" for South Africa.

Impact: Practically it seems impossible to introduce this within South Africa's context.
Why anyone would work hard to acquire something exclusively, just to be forced to resell it at a regulated wholesale price, doesn't make any sense.
Instead of working to secure exclusive content, every broadcaster would sit back and wait for someone else to do the work and be forced to resell the acquired content at a cheap, regulated price. Why expend the energy to swim yourself if you can cruise along in someone else's wake?


5.Opening up MultiChoice’s network
After MultiChoice did the capital expenditure over many years to build its own pay-TV autobahn, Icasa proposes everyone getting access to using the roads.
"One way of fostering entry would involve placing an obligation on a dominant provider to open their distribution infrastructure to other subscription television broadcasting providers," says Icasa.
"In this way, competition may be enhanced by creating the circumstances for a new entrant to utilise existing infrastructure, thereby lowering barriers to entry".

Impact: It's unlikely that McDonalds would ever be required to suddenly set aside a part of its ordering counters in its own restaurants, that it built itself, to KFC or Burger King. But that is what this proposal expects MultiChoice do with DStv.
How exactly other operators are to get access to the distribution access of MultiChoice, a complex network of satellite transponder leases, conditional access systems and DStv decoders isn't clear, if not almost practically impossible.
Walk into any Edgars and ask for the dedicated in-store till where you can pay PEP. The sales lady might smile, but she will be laughing at you on the inside.


6.Introducing set top box inter-operability
Pay-TV subscribers wanting to switch service providers must buy a new set top box (STB) or decoder and satellite dish due to a lack of inter-operability.
But that's the same as when people want to switch between Samsung and iPhone smartphones, Volkswagen and Nissan cars and even Absa and FNB bank accounts.
Icasa says "inter-operability" - meaning forcing pay-TV operators to make their decoder be used by all - "can help to stimulate competition by lowering switching costs".
"However, due to the technical complexities surrounding set top box inter-operability, Icasa would have to undertake further work and separate consultations on the issue before proposing it".

Impact: What a huge benefit would this not be to the ordinary pay-TV consumer - only it wouldn't be.
No pay-TV operator would have any incentive to invest in research and development (R&D) of decoders, all opting to wait for someone else to do the huge capital investment and then manufacturing and then piggy back once it's in the market.
Furthermore no pay-TV operator would bother to brand their own decoder if others get to use it, no one will invest in improving and adding features.
If inter-operability worked, people would wear each other's underwear.
Ask your dad if you can use his wallet for your money because the inter-operability means you don't have to buy and carry one too, and note his reaction.


Here is the Icasa document in its entirety:

Discussion Document on the Inquiry Into Subscription Television Services Gazette41070 by Thinus on Scribd

RTL launching a new international German pay-TV channel, RTL International, on 18 January that will be available in South Africa and Namibia through Deukom.

RTL Germany will launch a new channel, RTL International on 18 January that will be made available in South Africa as well through Deukom and Satelio.

Live news, magazine shows, soaps and other TV series will be broadcast on RTL International as a general entertainment channel in German, targeting German-speaking ex-pats and holidaymakers in South Africa and Namibia and countries like Canada, Australia, Israel and Georgia.

RTL International will be the world's first global German language general entertainment network. It will launch on 18 January and will become available in the United States in February.

"There is a lot of interest in RTL International being expressed by platforms all over the world because the station offers a unique opportunity to reach German ex-pats with its premium German content," says Stefan Sporn, the general manager of international distribution at RTL International.

"We look forward to this launch but also to the enormous potential opening up to us over the next few months to target even more platform partners, so that we can reach even more people with our unique TV brands".

RTL International will broadcast live news and funnel original productions from the Mediengruppe RTL Deutschland group's existing domestic German TV channels, RTL, VOX, RLT Nitro and n-tv and will include magazine shows, soaps, dramas and other TV series.

The RTL International schedule will include the breakfast show Guten Morgen Deutschland, news broadcasts RTL aktuell and Punkt 12, tabloid shows Explosiv and Exclusiv, the current episodes of soap operas Gute Zeiten, Schlechte Zeiten, Unter uns and Alles was zählt, series like Alarm für Cobra 11, Der Lehrer and Doctor’s Diary as well as the expat documentary Goodbye Deutschland! Die Auswanderer and the car show auto mobil.