Daily Maverick reveals it was a bidder for MultiChoice's new local TV news channel on DStv, says that despite 'the all-round silence, no comments' around non-transparent bidding process and bidders list, the questions are not going to go away.

The Daily Maverick online commentary and news analysis publication on Monday morning revealed that it was one of the bidders who applied to run a new local TV news channel on MultiChoice's DStv satellite pay-TV platform  to replace the corrupt and cancelled "Gupta-news" ANN7/Afro Worldview that was shut down on 20 August.

MultiChoice's highly-fraught and controversial South African TV news channel war is once again hotting up with public calls for Naspers' pay-TV arm to be open and transparent and to stop the secrecy around its TV news channels dealings.

Political parties ranging from the EFF to the Democratic Alliance (DA), as well as broadcasting public pressure groups are calling on MultiChoice to release the Newzroom Africa contract, as well as the information around the various bidders who applied, and their eventual ranking.

It comes after MultiChoice last week announced that it has chosen Newzroom Afrika as the new 24-hour local TV news channel to replace Mzwanele Manyi's dumped Afro Worldview channel on DStv.

Newzroom Afrika will launch in early 2019 on DStv and will take the channel number of 405 on MultiChoice's DStv satellite pay-TV platform, the one where ANN7 that turned into Afro Worldview, launched and was dumped a week ago.

Newzroom Afrika, following after eNCA (DStv 403) and SABC News (DStv 404) will be made available to all DStv subscribers, meaning that it will have a wider reach that eMedia Investment's eNCA.

The two directors heading up Newzroom Afrika are Thokozani Nkosi of the production company Eclipse TV, and Thabile Ngwato of Rapid Innovation.

Daily Maverick, run by Branko Brkic as editor-in-chief, on Monday in an opinion piece by Ufrieda Ho, said that the Naspers-owned MultiChoice's dominance in the pay-TV sector "makes its operational decision-making processes matters of public interest".

"It has the de facto monopoly on subscription-based TV, with a 52% share and a penetration of 11.9 million households in 2017. Its influence in deciding who gets to launch a news channel, in the 2019 election year, makes its motives fair game for questions."

Daily Maverick quotes William Bird of Media Monitoring Africa (MMA), who says that MultiChoice's bidding process around the new local TV news channel has lacked transparency and openness from the beginning.

"The way MultiChoice is behaving - only telling the little they want to disclose to seem like they are making the effort to be transparent - undermines not just their own, but all, media credibility. It's why we've called for the shortlist of bidders to be made public and for clarity on ownership and who's funding Newzroom Afrika".

Jackie Rakitla, MultiChoice general manager of corporate affairs, in a quote to Daily Maverick said "We are not sharing the shortlist, evaluation and scoring of bidders as we are respecting the privacy of unsuccessful bidders who are employed within other media companies".

Daily Maverick said that "the all-round silence, no comments and off-the-record-only comment has caused rumours to fly - all of them untested - but unanswered, they are not going away".

BREAKING. South Africa's pay TV operators object to the order from the National Consumer Commission to sell TV channels separately.

South Africa's pay TV operators have rejected the compliance notice issued to them by the National Consumer Commission which has ordered South Africa's pay TV operators to perform a so-called ''unbundling'' of their TV channels and allow pay TV subscribers to choose TV channels from pay TV providers individually on a ''pick and pay'' basis.

In essense the National Consumer Commission sees individual TV channels as separate ''products'' and the delivery of multiple TV channels as ''bundling''.

Similar to a box of multi-coloured crayons that's sold as one product, the global pay TV model, as followed by operators in South Africa, works through making a collection of linear TV streams available through an economy of scale. The Commission is ordering pay TV operators to take the crayons out of the box and sell them one by one, individually.

ALSO READ: OPINION. South Africa's National Consumer Commission seems clueless as to why ordering pay TV operators to sell TV channels separately, is a bad move.

Last month the National Consumer Commission ordered MultiChoice that runs DStv and On Digital Media that runs TopTV to amend their contracts and to also ''unbundle'' the way they sell TV channels to subscribers and set a deadline of  November for them to respond to the Commission.

Vino Govender, CEO of ODM told TV with Thinus today that On Digital Media intends to reject the proposal by the National Consumer Commission ''that would force us to offer consumers the ability to pick and choose the channels they want to subscribe to''.

Vino Govender says ODM has ''taken legal steps to repudiate the commission's line of action because it threatens our business model''. He says if TopTV complies and allow subscribers to subscribe to only a few select TV channels it ''could force the only pay-TV alternative to MultiChoice out of business; this will not be in the best interests of the end consumers.''

''We have considered offering pick and mix a la carte options before TopTV launched but discovered the model made no financial sense as content providers would have hiked the cost of channels substantially. The model is also from a systems and administrative point of view impossible to maintain,'' says Vino Govender.

''If we remodel our product structure it will cause our business serious harm and could lead to our closure,'' he says. Vino Govender says such a move would cost South Africa as much as 6 000 jobs nationally.

MultiChoice feels the same as has also objected to the order from the Commission.

''MultiChoice South Africa has objected to the compliance notice served on us by the National Consumer Commission,'' says Jackie Rakitla, the general manager for corporate affairs at MultiChoice South Africa. ''We are not in a position to respond to any questions in this regard until the matter has been resolved at the Consumer Tribunal.''