NBCUniversal International Networks silent on E!'s ongoing embarrassment on DStv: Why E! Live from the Red Carpet isn't 'Live' at all

by Thinus Ferreira

NBCUniversal International Networks doesn't want to comment or explain why DStv subscribers in South Africa and across the African continent are made to watch any of its supposedly pre-show E! Live from the Red Carpet as belated afterthought programming.

While still calling it E! Live from the Red Carpet on its schedules, NBCUniversal International Networks for quite a while now no longer has its E! Live from the Red Carpet coverage from various Hollywood award shows either live, or showing it on E! (DStv 124) for Africa before awards shows.

What exactly is the purpose of watching people doing arrival interviews pre-show or pre-game, when it's only shown long afterwards "post-game", when even the winners have been reported, the awards shown has been seen, and social media had its wave of clips? 

On Monday 3 February - long after the 2025 Grammy Awards was already shown live from Los Angeles - the South African PR company of NBCUniversal International Networks sent out a press release to inform the media that "E! Live from the Red Carpet: The 2025 Grammy Awards, E!'s signature red carpet coverage from this weekend's Grammys will air on E! tonight at 19:00".

Of course the press release for this E! programming was far too late and wholly irrelevant to any 2025 Grammy coverage that had already been done days before and during the weekend.

Yet E! also had no problem in trying to tell South African media, which it apparently wanted to tell DStv subscribers in turn, to watch something called "live" that was already old, stale and definitely not live.

On Monday last week, TVwithThinus asked NBCUniversal International Networks, through a media query made through the PR agency, why the E! Live from the Red Carpet shows are no longer shown live.

A week later and after waiting seven days there's been no response from NBCUniversal International Networks.

It's of course not just the Grammy Awards where NBCUniversal International Networks decided to foist off a live pre-show on E! thatis only shown days later as recorded after-filler to DStv viewers. 

It happened - and happens - with all of the other award shows as well - like last month's supposed E! Live from the Red Carpet for the Golden Globe Awards which was also first shown on E! the Monday evening after, and September's 76th Primetime Emmy Awards where E!'s awful pre-becomes-post programming embarrassment was also very, very obvious.

The regression of NBCUniversal International Networks to no longer showing E! Live from the Red Carpet as actually "live" is sadly not happening as something on its own.

It is taking place alongside the broader zombification trend of the programming of pay-TV channels of which E! is one.

The dilution of the characters and content of channels like E! is sad to see. 

Besides a constantly reduced offering of what signature programming there used to be on channels like E! to bring viewers like MultiChoice's DStv subscribers there, the little signature programming that remains are further mangled like E! Live from the Red Carpet not even shown live.

Either NBCUniversal International Networks thinks South African and African viewers no longer care, won't notice, never cared or that it isn't important. 

Or possibly NBCU made the calculation that it's no longer worth going through the trouble to get and schedule E! Live from the Red Carpet as an actual LIVE programming event.

In terms of programming, E! Live from the Red Carpet used to be a part of E!'s competitive advantage. Dstv subscribers interested in watching an awards show - already predisposed to the content - tuned to E! first before switching to watch the actual awards show. 

In a sense able to capitalise on what's called a "captive audience", E! got viewers who watched E! first because they planned on watching something else just after it. Now it's destroyed. 

After waiting a week for comment and ignoring it, NBCUniversal International Networks obviously didn't think it was important enough an issue to give any kind of a media response and further indicative of the sad indifference.

NBCUniversal abruptly removed the Nurses telenovela featuring a gay couple from Telemundo in Africa in June during Prime Month but MultiChoice says the series will be back.

by Thinus Ferreira

In June NBCUniversal International Networks abruptly removed the Spanish telenovela Nurses from its Telemundo (DStv 118) channel in Africa without explanation, with the decision to axe the show - featuring a gay couple - coming during Prime Month after Uganda's president signed into law draconian new anti-gay legislation.

Nurses is the latest TV content removed from DStv across Africa over the last few years by international channel distributors like Warner Bros. Discovery, Paramount Global and NBCUniversal International Networks due to LGBTQ content or characters.

NBCUniversal International Networks has only one channel feed for Telemundo Africa for the entire continent so it's impossible to remove content for just one or two African countries. 

Operating on a lowest common denominator system, content banned in one country means it is removed on Telemundo's playout programming schedule for all countries, including South Africa.

NBCUniversal International Networks still issued highlights and programming synopses for Nurses for June and July although these episodes were pulled and never shown.

Nurses, filmed in Colombia and known as Enfermeras, is dubbed into English for DStv subscribers in South Africa and the rest of sub-Saharan Africa and has been shown since February 2022 but last month the show abruptly disappeared and was replaced by a rebroadcast of Decisions in prime time after NBCUniversal Networks stopped the telenovela that was in its fourth season.

Nurses includes a gay couple, Álvaro and Felipe, portrayed by Julián Trujillo and Miguel González.

After Uganda's president Yoweri Museveni signed into law new legislation that criminalises identifying as LGBTQIA+ or the "promotion" of homosexuality, Cameroon's government censorship body, the National Communication Council (NCC), issued a notification with the subject "Warning", threatening that TV channels will be suspended that broadcast "scenes of homosexuality".

The NCC said that it has noticed "the proliferation of programmes promoting homosexual practices", "generally broadcast by foreign editors" and that it "calls on the promoters of channels broadcasting programmes showing scenes of homosexuality in Cameroon to immediately withdraw these programmes, which violate the law, morality and customs of our country, on pain of the outright suspension of the media concerned".

In June, about the sudden removal of Nurses, NBCU International Networks said "We intend to comply with local broadcast regulations in each market where we broadcast and are adjusting the programming as necessary".

Now NBCU International Networks in response to a media query from TVwithThinus says that Nurses will return to the Telemundo schedule. It's however not clear whether episodes of Nurses are getting edited with a reversioned edition removing the gay characters of Álvaro and Felipe.

"Following an adjustment to the planned schedule, Telemundo viewers can now look forward to Nurses rejoining the schedule in September," NBCU International Networks says.

MultiChoice was asked about Telemundo's removal of Nurses during Pride Month because of gay content and how it aligns with MultiChoice support of the LGBTQ community, as well as what will happen when more African countries demand content removal which will mean that it disappears for subscribers in South Africa and elsewhere.

In a response, MultiChoice says "We do not have editorial control over the content of third-party channels or their content schedules".

"From 11 September season 4 of Nurses will return from its season break and air on Telemundo. We encourage viewers to explore some of the great content offered on the channel including other DStv channels such as Zee World and TLNovelas".

Universal+ boss Lee Raftery on the launch of NBCUniversal's catch-up service in Africa: 'Pretty groundbreaking'.

by Thinus Ferreira

Universal+ arrived on Friday 14 October in South Africa and across sub-Saharan Africa in partnership with MultiChoice, bringing DStv subscribers a catch-up content hub of NBCUniversal's TV channels - something that Universal+ boss Lee Raftery describes as "pretty groundbreaking".

I sat down with Lee Raftery, managing director for the Europe, Middle East & Africa (EMEA) region for NBCUniversal International Networks & direct-to-consumer, to ask him about Universal+'s origin story, to find out what success for Universal+ would look like in this territory, what the possibility is of NBCUniversal's Peacock video streaming service launching here, and to hear how he sees Universal+'s value proposition for DStv subscribers.

What is the origin story of Universal+? When did you start to work on bringing it to South Africa and why did you decide to launch it in this territory now?

Lee Raftery: We started working on Universal+ about three and a bit years ago now. 

It was essentially a bridging service between linear and streaming. Crucially what we want to do is work with our existing partners around the world and give them a really strong on-demand offer to complement linear TV channels. 

We still strongly believe in linear but we also think everybody wants on-demand and box sets as well. We started figuring out how we can construct that. We launched in Spain in January 2020 and we've been rolling out around the globe. We've done Latin America, India and we've got other announcements pending next week.

With linear television and streaming you don't want the one cannibalising the other. How do you keep both strong? How do you see it?

Lee Raftery: This took me a while to get to but I think we should all be agnostic - if people are watching our great content, I'm happy, whether that's linear or through streaming. 

I think for too long the industry tried to keep viewers either in linear or streaming. I think let the viewer decide. I very much enjoy linear television, when I get home and you don't know what you're going to watch, you switch on linear and that's great. 

Other times you go "I want to watch that specific great show, and the next episode and the next episode" and just binge through it. My view is don't fight it, let the viewer decide.

How would you describe the value proposition of Universal+? What is it that it enhances or is in addition to?

Lee Raftery: We worked with MultiChoice to really make this a great value proposition for DStv subscribers. They already have our bouquet of five great TV channels - Universal TV, Studio Universal, Telemundo, E! and now DreamWorks. 

This gives the viewer thousands of hours of on-demand content originating from those channels that they can access through their DStv Explora decoder box or the DStv app on-demand. And crucially for not a cent more, which I think is a great value message that enhances the DStv proposition.

Would it be too soon to ask, is the vision that it would remain a catch-up service for library content or would you also consider Universal+ Original content that would only reside there?

Lee Raftery: It's possible we would put original content there but primarily it would be a catch-up service with box sets and full seasons. 

Maybe in time we would put original content straight on there, we've done that in other markets. If there's a big enough audience on Universal+ then why not?

I have to ask you about Peacock which is NBCUniversal's streaming service. Are there plans to also bring Peacock to Africa or South Africa, or would Universal+ be the stand-in in this territory?

Lee Raftery: It's a complicated marketplace at the moment for everybody in the industry and viewers. At the moment Peacock has been incredibly successfully launched in the United States and doing incredibly well. 

We launched it in conjunction with Sky in the Sky markets - the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy and some smaller markets that Sky covers. 

At the moment we've got no further announcements to make around Peacock but we are actively looking at opportunities around the world in a market-by-market basis, so watch this space. 

Can you talk about the partnership with MultiChoice, and might Universal+ be spun out from just being for DStv subscribers, for instance working with telecoms like Vodacom, or is Universal+ an exclusive partnership with MultiChoice?

Lee Raftery: At the moment our plans are that Universal+ is exclusively available to DStv subscribers and that will be for quite some time and we don't have any plans to broaden that yet.

What would you define success like for Universal+ in a year for now or five years or a decade from now? How would you measure its impact?

Lee Raftery: Success for Universal+ is lots of people using it and watching box sets and we've got that balance between linear and on-demand really going, that would be great for me. 

There are challenges in Africa with data costs etc. so we're not unaware of that. We'll see how this takes off but we think it's pretty groundbreaking for Africa so we have high hopes.

Lastly, what makes you happy about bringing Universal+ here?

Lee Raftery: I think the Universal brand name is an incredible and historic brand name, well over a hundred years old now and it means great entertainment to people. 

So to further bolster that brand name across Africa with a great robust service in conjunction with our partners at MultiChoice is great.

ALSO READ: MultiChoice adds NBCUniversal's on-demand service Universal+ to DStv Catch Up from 14 October.

MultiChoice opening 5 premium TV channels for Easter for more than half a month from 18 March for DStv Compact; 2 channels for DStv Extra subscribers.

Five Easter eggs are coming to lower-tiered DStv subscribers when MultiChoice will open 5 TV channels for more than half a month from 18 March.

E! Entertainment (DStv 124), Nickelodeon (DStv 305), Comedy Central (DStv 122), Lifetime (DStv 131) and Nick Jr. (DStv 307) will be opened to DStv Compact subscribers from 18 March to 4 April.

Lifetime and Nick Jr. will also be opened to DStv Extra subscribers as well during the same period.

The five channels that's only available for the top-tiered DStv Premium package, will be unencoded for 18 days for what MultiChoice describes as "bumper Easter entertainment".

E! is provided by NBCUniversal Networks International, Lifetime is from A+E Networks UK, and Comedy Central, Nickelodeon and Nick Jr. are supplied by Viacom International Media Networks.

During the period lower-tiered DStv subscribers will be able to see the Beyond the Red Carpet local special on E! Entertainment, the channel's first local red carpet coverage broadcast two days after the South African Film and Television Awards, on 22 March at 20:00.

Nickelodeon has programming during Easter to keep kids entertained ranging from Spongebob Squarepants and Breadwinners to Nicky, Dicky & Dawn. Nick Jr. has Dora the Explorer, Team Umizoomi, Paw Patrol, BubbleGuppies and Blaze.

Comedy Central has The Daily Show with Trevor Noah.

Lifetime has the reality show The Jacksons: Next Generation, the movie Toni Braxton: Unbreak My Heart and the Bill Cosby accusers documentary, Cosby: The Women Speak.

E! Entertainment continues to degrade women by calling them 'bitches'; does it again during its Golden Globe coverage (while men remain just ... 'men').

For a TV channel supposedly for women and targeting mostly female viewers, E! Entertainment (DStv 124) degoratory continuation of calling other women "bitches" on television continued on Sunday night when E!'s Golden Globe red carpet team with glee battled the "bitches".

E! Entertainment, interestingly, never calls men by any other word than ... men.

That E! Entertainment uses the word "bitches" as part of its internalised sexism, seemingly without thinking and as a joke, makes it even worse.

E! who is quick to show women makeovers and give fashion tips, signals to those very women that its okay for them to be labelled "bitches".

It's not just fine if someone calls you a "bitch" according to E! - according to E! Entertainment it's actually inspirational and something to aspire to.

If a top Hollywood actress can be called a "bitch" or battle for the "boss bitch" title, any woman according to E! Entertainment should be so glad and honoured to be labelled a female dog.

The irony compounds when you see the unvarnished misogeny the NBCUniversal Networks International channel on MultiChoice's DStv blatantly does over and over again - while it will shockingly censor other material that it shouldn't.

Making it worse it that E! Entertainment shows people in Africa - women and men, girls and boys - that its "okay" to call women "bitches". Even successful ones. Even beautiful ones. Yes. The successful and beautiful ones can be "boss bitches".

Why is it okay for E!'s Giuliana Rancic to call someone like Empire's Taraji P. Henson a "bitch" on the red carpet? Or doing "Bitch Stole My Look" on Fashion Police?

If the executives at NBCUniversal, E! Entertainment and NBCUniversal Networks International call their moms "bitches" in their face it would probably not be as bad, but I highly doubt that those with daughters call their own children "bitches". Yet its fine for it to be done to females on their TV channel.

What's sad is that it happens without thinking - without seemingly a second thought - an attitude of let's have fun with the "bitches" right, because women don't care.

Will NBCUniversal introduce Frances Berwick who oversees all its lifestyle channels like E!, Esquire, Bravo and Oxygen at an advertiser upfront event or press junket for media as "boss bitch Frances Berwick"?

Yet E! is fine to call other women working in television that.

All the support for women's rights causes, all the shocked and breathless Bill Cosby reporting outrage, all the lip service to helping and reflecting women and their lifestyles and lifestyle issues pale in comparison to making a conscious systemic change of how you refer to, and speak - and won't speak - about women.

Not to go all Oprah or Iyanla on people, honey child, but your words become your reality.

How you describe yourself and others, and how the media, like E! on DStv, gives you seemingly "permission" to talk to and describe others, shape our existence.

Describing a woman - any woman (or a man) - as a "bitch" is and always will be a put-down, even if E! Entertainment wants to make it look acceptable or as if it's "good" for a powerful or well-dressed woman to be called a female dog.

E! Entertainment has the power to change its "bitch" attitude; sadly it doesn't appear as if the NBCUniversal channel even realises that it has a "bitch" problem.

E! Entertainment on DStv censors Jimmy Kimmel saying 'masturbating' to Ryan Seacrest on Emmy red carpet, but the Kardashians can say f- and s- .

NBCUniversal Networks International continues with the crazy and irrational censorship of E! Entertainment (DStv 124) on MultiChoice's DStv - this time suddenly censoring Jimmy Kimmel saying the word "masturbating" to Ryan Seacrest on the Emmy Red Carpet - after first showing it uncensored and then inexplicably deciding to mute out the word in Jimmy Kimmel's joke.

E! Entertainment remains an utter frustration and irony to watch while NBCUniversal Networks International keeps botching the channel that has Botched with bad censorship that makes no sense.

Shows like E! News are constantly blurred and bleeped to irritating effect, while reality trash like Keeping Up with the Kardashians are "allowed" to say words like "sh*t" and "f-" uncensored.

Initially, viewers on E! Entertainment heard Jimmy Kimmel's joke uncensored on Sunday. He took over the mic on the E! dais in a joke with Ryan Seacrest and asked him what he's wearing. Ryan Seacrest of course now wears his own Ryan Seacrest Collection.

Jimmy Kimmel told Ryan Seacrest "Oh you're wearing yourself? That's like masturbating" in one of the red carpet night's funniest impromptu jokes, after which Ryan Seacrest grabbed the mic back.

In the initial live broadcast and the rebroadcast of the E! Live on the Red Carpet the joke remained uncensored - until E! Entertainment suddenly had the word censored and muted out on DStv in later broadcasts.

Strangely, and bizarrely, on Wednesday night in Fashion Police on E! in its post Emmy special, the exact same clip was used - and this time Jimmy Kimmel's "masturbating" was heard - meaning that the E! Entertainment and NBCUniversal Networks International censorship is not even done consistently.

It's apparently okay to see massive bare breasts on Botched on E! Entertainment and other private parts of the human anatomy and other distateful scenes and words on shows like The Soup but you can't hear the word "masturbating" on E! Entertainment more than twice.

The constant, irritating and inappropriate E! Entertainment censorship and deplorable infringement on freedom of speech (on NBCUniversal Networks International's own channel!) makes E! extremely hard to watch with the incessant and ongoing interruptions.

E! on DStv makes you feel as if you've suddenly forgotten to put on your glasses when things inexplicably go blurry while watching a supposed news show like E! News, or as if you need to change your hearing aid batteries because of intermittent sound problems.

Meanwhile there's nothing wrong with your eyesight or hearing - it's NBCUniversal Networks International botching their own channel for the people who the channel is supposedly for: viewers.

If the content E! Entertainment shows on MultiChoice's platform isn't appropriate for E! and E! doesn't want viewers to see or hear a word like "masturbating", why is NBCUniversal Networks International then carrying the channel on DStv in the first place?