e.tv on the remarkable similarities between Imbewu the TV show and Imbewu the Artscape stage play: Simply 'coincidendal'.

Following a case of alleged copyright infringement, e.tv is calling the multiple, remarkable similarities between the free-to-air broadcaster's Imbewu drama series, and the dramatic play Imbewu that preceded it, simply coincidence.

It comes after a dispute over copyright according to The Mail & Guardian that first reported it, after the young playwright Sinethemba Twani (29) from Gugulethu, Cape Town, who works as a petrol attendant, noticed the multiple similarities between his play entitled Imbewu that enjoyed a successful stage run at the Artscape theatre, and e.tv's similarly entitled Imbewu that started in April.

Imbewu, the TV show, is produced by Grapevine Productions, a joint venture between Videovision Entertainment, Word of Mouth Pictures and Luys Productions with Duma Ndlovu and Anant Singh.

When Imbewu started on e.tv, Sinethemba Twani suddenly got congratulatory messages from family, friends and others who were under the impression that his Artscape stage production has been adapted into e.tv's TV series.

Besides the same titles, Imbewu the TV show shares several similarities with Imbewu the play - the first draft of which Sinethemba Twani wrote in 2011.

In both Imbewu's a business man is sterile. In both Imbewu's his wife is impregnated by someone else with his son who isn't his biological child and the man unaware of it. Both Imbewu's explore the repercussions of the secret.

The way in which the man in both Imbewu's discover they're sterile are the same - both hear it from a sangoma. The way in which the men in both Imbewu's find their initial investments as start-up capital for their business empires are the same.

In Imbewu the play a man convinces his friend to sell his cattle inheritance after the death of his father to invest in a start-up business (taxis). In e.tv's Imbewu a man convinces his brother to sell his cattle after the death of his father to invest in a start-up business (oil).

Michael Pocock, e.tv publicist, told The Mail & Guardian that Imbewu the script of Imbewu the TV series was developed in 2015 and that "the similarities are coincidental, and the story of Imbewu also reflects all the demographics of the KwaZulu-Natal region where it is based".

Last month content creator Glodine "Vuvu" Makapela also made an accusation of alleged copyright infringement on Twitter against David Tlale of The Intern that was on SABC3 and Pearl Modiadie of the SABC's reality design competition series on SABC1, Raw Silk that has been renewed for a second season, saying they stole her concept entitled Top Designer she came up with in 2011.

eMedia Investment's Openview free-to-air satellite TV service finally launches its first PVR capability with an Open PVR USB.

e.tv's satellite TV service has launched its first personal video recorder (PVR) decoder functionality, the Open PVR, making it possible for users in South Africa and neighbouring countries to now also record and store free-to-air content shown on e.tv and the SABC's channels to watch later.

The Open PVR, activated through inserting an Openview PVR USB into the latest NA9200 Openview decoder model, allows viewers to record and store content, as well as pausing a live linear TV channel for up to 15 minutes, and then unpause and continue.

Viewers can also record one TV channel while watching another TV channel on Openview's channels offering.

The Openview PVR USB is sold in two sizes - 32 GB that can record up to 8 hours of high definition (HD) content, and a 64GB USB that can record up to 18 hours of HD content.

Openview - formerly known as OpenView HD (OVHD) that eMedia Investments originally launched in October 2013 under its Platco Digital hub - has quietly been rebranded by eMedia Holdings with a new red logo doing away with the pink and purple, and dropping the "HD" moniker.

Vasili Vass, eMedia Investment's group head of corporate affairs, and e.tv publicist Michael Pocock didn't respond to media enquiries about Openview.

Patrick Conroy who took over from Maxwell Nonge in March 2016 as Openview's managing director has since left, with e.tv not responding when asked who took over this year in running its Openview platform business.

eMedia that is now pushing the new PVR functionality of the Openview set-top box (STB) to market is following StarSat operated by China's StarTimes Media SA and On Digital Media (ODM), that finally launched its first PVR capable decoder in June 2017 in South Africa.


Openview: Small audience but big plans
Openview remains a loss-making operation with about 35 000 new STB activations monthly.

It attracts only a meagre 3.5% of the total television audience in South Africa but although it incurred an operating loss of R255 million for the financial year that ended March 2018, eMedia Holdings said it remains focused on funneling money into the service to drive it to success.

Openview reached 1.1 million activated decoders by the end of March 2018. It means that eMedia Holdings still has to almost double the Openview audience (6%) to reach its projected break-even point. At the current Openview growth rate, that will take another 4 years.

Interestingly, while Openview is only meant for South Africa, activated STBs taken outside of the country's borders, are also being sold, although illegally, in neighbouring Southern African countries, giving viewers in places like Zimbabwe, Swaziland and elsewhere access to e.tv, SABC1, SABC2 and SABC3 that they find to be much better content that their own censorship-heavy state broadcaster offerings.

Within months eMedia Investments plans to launch OpenNews as an in-house sister channel on Openview.

OpenNews will also serve as a rival TV news channel to its existing eNCA (DStv 403) news channel that eMedia supplies to MultiChoice's DStv. The plan is also to do an additional daily Afrikaans TV news bulletin on Openview's eExtra channel, including new local Afrikaans TV shows.

eMedia's plan with this is not just to bolster the existing Openview content proposition and to attract bigger uptake, but also to create a content fallback fail-safe in the possible eventuality that the MultiChoice and M-Net contracts for eNCA, and eNuus supplied to kykNET (DStv 144), are not renewed should channel carriage renegotiations at some point in the future fail and eNCA get dropped.

The rebranded eNCA dumps Africa from the TV news channel's new look without any explanation as to why - and a lot of unanswered questions.

The rebranding of eNCA (DStv 403) introduced this week Monday on eMedia Investments' TV news channel has seen eNCA dump Africa - literally - as in doing away with the 11-point hendecagon symbol representing the African continent.

In May longtime eNCA insiders told TVwithThinus that the outline of the African continent done in blue from the second rebrand - and that was formed out of the tiles of the first eNCA rebrand when the logo changed from the eNews Channel look - will be a gonner when eNCA rebrands in July.

This has now been confirmed with viewers that can see that Africa as far as eNCA's new on-air look is concerned, is indeed gone.

eNCA hasn't explained the news channel's new logo and hasn't explained why the Africa silhouette has been deleted.

eNCA and e.tv didn't respond to any media enquiries made last week about eNCA's on-air rebranding.

According to eNCA insiders who spoke out in May, a top-level eMedia Holdings executive allegedly said in a meeting that he wants the Africa logo removed from the eNCA logo since Africa is synonymous with famine and corruption.

TVwithThinus asked Vasili Vass, eMedia Investments group head of corporate affairs, as well as Michael Pocock, e.tv publicist about this in a written media enquiry and what the company's comment is about this but neither responded.

According to an insider eNCA - formerly an abbreviation of "eNews Channel Africa" - allegedly also "no longer stands for anything. It's now just letters". eNCA and e.tv were asked about this, what eNCA stands for now - or maybe still - but chose to also not to comment and respond.

eMedia Investment's removal of Africa from the eNCA logo fits in with eNCA's dramatic downsizing of first-hand Africa news coverage over the past 3 years, including the shuttering of its Africa bureaux, firing of correspondents, cancelling its news and current affairs shows specifically covering Africa, and largely making use of international wire news service content when there's news in Africa further removed from its Hyde Park, Johannesburg studios in South Africa.

A lot of unanswered questions
A lot of questions about eNCA's latest rebrand - the news channel's third in its 10 year history - remain unanswered.

eNCA didn't explain why the afternoon strand News Day was canned, or why News Night was moved an hour earlier to now start at 17:00, or why Moneyline was dumped. 

The eNCA on-air rebrand comes amidst a wave of defections from eNCA the last few months with staffers who said that "morale is at an all time low". No word on what eNCA makes of that.

What exactly is eNCA's view and relationship towards Africa regarding news and covering it with breaking news stories when it happens as well as investigative first-person, on-the-ground stories in the way CNN International (DStv 401) and Sky News (DStv 402) do? Why the lack of investment in this area? Because eNCA doesn't want to, or can't afford it?

How will eNCA on MultiChoice's DStv be different than eMedia Investment's new sister TV news channel, OpenNews, that it will be launching on Openview within months and what are the differentials between the two (since eNCA rebrand now presumably took in account that it can't "rebrand" yet again in a few months come November)?

How does eNCA and eMedia Investment execs feel about its ongoing business relationship with MultiChoice that carries eNCA on DStv and what is the future, and long-term future outlook of the channel and this relationship? There are some very clear signs of relationship strain bordering on dislike between the two.

Will eNCA's dalliance with political parties and the way eNCA is courting politicians continue into 2019 - a general election year? How will eNCA try to maintain a semblance of impartiality and objectivity when political leaders are put in eNCA's anchor chair to apparently create social media viral moments instead of bringing the audience news - and will there be more similar "must-see TV" stunts during South Africa's election year?

Finally there's the litany of complaints regarding the new on-air look that eNCA seems to ignore. Was this tested beforehand? Did someone sit down and look how everything would look on camera beforehand? It feels as if eNCA decided to roll it out to viewers as a live on-air test without actually sorting the myriad of issues viewers are complaining about, first.