It's with Them: This is Us jumps from M-Net to Disney+ as streaming steals from DStv.

by Thinus Ferreira

DStv subscribers who started watching the American drama series This is Us on M-Net will now have to switch to Disney+ to see how it ends, with the series that is jumping to Disney's streamer as more shows on South African television continue to switch from traditional pay-TV to streaming.

Viewers wondering when the 6th and final season of This is Us, which started earlier this year on NBC in the United States, was going to make its way to M-Net (DStv 101) might be disillusioned to hear that they will now have to subscribe to Disney's video streaming service to see the conclusion of the story of the Pearson siblings.

M-Net told TVwithThinus in response to a media query that This is Us will no longer be on the channel that it acquired and started to show from the first season in May 2017.

"M-Net has not licensed This is Us season 6. This means that it will not air on M-Net," the channel said.

The 6th season of This is Us wraps up the storyline of the 20th Television distributed drama series that made viewers cry about the family drama of Randall (Sterling K. Brown),  Kate (Chrissy Metz) and Kevin (Justin Hartley), as well as their parents Jack (Milo Ventimiglia) and Rebeca (Mandy Moore) as told through time-jumps and backflashes to fill in the family's history.

Disney South Africa told TVwithThinus that it will now carry the complete This is Us box set, including the latest and final 6th season.

"All 6 seasons of This Is Us will be available on Disney+ from 14 September."

The next TV series likely also leaving M-Net and also jumping to Disney+, although not yet confirmed, is the science fiction series The Orville of which the new third season is now on the Hulu video streaming service in the United States.

The entire series including the new season is now on Disney+ in America and the United Kingdom since 10 August.

"With regards to The Orville, seasons 1 and 2 are currently available to stream now on Disney+ and we will let you know when season 3 will be available," Disney says.

This is Us and The Orville are just the latest examples of shows jumping from their original broadcast TV home in South Africa to streaming platforms. 

In the new trend, shows like The Walking Dead are moving from traditional pay-TV - for instance from MultiChoice's DStv and StarTimes' StarSat - to video streaming. 

It's very similar to how American shows that were once on free-to-air TV channels like the SABC and e.tv, started to jump to DStv in the previous two decades as pay-TV became dominant and needed content volume to fill linear pay-TV channel's schedules. 

American family drama series This Is Us seen on M-Net to end with a 6th season in 2022.

by Thinus Ferreira

The American drama series This Is Us from 20th Television and seen on M-Net (DStv 101) will end after 6 seasons.

The Hollywood Reporter cited insiders saying that the Pearson family drama series playing out over several decades and that is currently in its 5th season starring Mandy Moore, Justin Hartley, Milo Ventimiglia and Sterling K. Brown, will conclude with in 2022 with no further renewals. 

When This Is Us was renewed for a further 3 seasons in 2019, insiders at the time said it would be the final stretch for the series and that it was at its "midpoint" of the story at the end of its third season.

In 2019 creator Dan Fogelman told the Hollywood trade he had a whole plan and structure mapped out for the series and how it will eventually conclude.

"We never set out to make a television series that was going to last 18 seasons, so we have a very direct plan. I have script pages I have written and I’m writing that really are deep, deep, deep into the future. We have a plan for what we’re going to do, and I know what the plan is," he said.

TV NEWS ROUND-UP. Today's interesting TV stories to read - 2 November 2020.

Here's the latest news about TV that I read and that you should read too:

■ As South Africa's bloated and financially struggling public broadcaster gets ready to retrench hundreds of staffers the SABC is looking for an external service provider to do job evaluations for the SABC for 6 months.

■ Fox in America cancels its new drama series Filthy Rich and NeXt after single seasons (both of which are actually good).

■ James Bond actor Sean Connery dead at 90.

■ The correspondents of The Daily Show seen on Comedy Central (DStv 122) on the difficulties and how they've been adjusting to filming from their living rooms.

■ England in new Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic lockdown: TV and film industry can continue but cinemas will have to close.

■ CNN (DStv 401) reporter Amara Walker in 3 anti-Asian racist incidents in 1 hour inside an American airport.

■ Katlego Maboe: 6 things to know as the TV presenter now faces a court battle.

■ "The worst Top Gear I've ever seen!"

Many viewers feel that the "new" Top Gear seen on BBC Brit (DStv 120) doesn't work and is awkward.

■ eNCA (DStv 403) and e.tv fined over Gareth Cliff's Covid-19 conspiracy theorist show.

- Media Monitoring Africa (MMA) says the Gareth Cliff interview damaged eNCA and raised serious questions about the editorial failures at the eMedia Investments channel:

"While the host and producer should shoulder some of the blame, serious questions need to be raised about the editorial failure that gave the go-ahead to run the interview."

■ Nigeria's corrupt National Broadcasting Commission (NBC) that is handing out fines to TV channels like AIT, Channels TV and Arise TV for covering #EndSARS public protests should stop trying to "padlock the air".

■ The creator of This is Us, seen on M-Net (DStv 101) explains how #BlackLivesMatter and the Covid-19 pandemic will feature in the new 5th season.

■ Why Netflix will keep raising its prices for subscribers.

■ Shock-couple Babes Wodumo and Mampintsha apparently signed a R3 million contract to do a 13-episode reality series with MultiChoice's Showmax streaming service.

■ China's state-run China Central TV (CCTV) remains shrouded in secrecy.

- Mexican TV news anchor shot dead in his car.

■ How to look rich on TV: The Undoing that will be shown on M-Net (DStv 101) and what money looks like on the TV screen.

Creating a fictional world for the 1 percent isn't as easy as it seems.

■ SABC1's Generations creator and producer Mfundi Vundla on his art collection and what's hanging in his bathroom.

■ SABC: We can't make money from Google's YouTube.

TV NEWS ROUND-UP. Today's interesting TV stories to read - 23 July 2020.

Here's the latest news about TV that I read and that you should read too:

■ Disney, Sky and Netflix are the best of Frenemies.
Sky's pay-TV boss reveals - just like the case is with MultiChoice's DStv - an initial nervousness over allowing Netflix onto its Sky Q pay-TV service.

■ Ellen DeGeneres - Th evil stepmother of American daytime TV.

■ Woman tries to steal a 165 cm flatscreen TV set.

■ Love on the spectrum - a dating show that celebrates autism.

■ How I found my female legal mentors on TV.

■ As TV evolves, so too does the scale and scope of innovation.

■ Netflix's Indian Matchmaking misses the full story on arranged marriages.
 - Triggers debate.   - Doctor Who's Mandip Gipp slams the show over its portrayal of colourism.
-Viewers slam show as a "cesspool of casteims, colourism, sexism and classisim".

■ The 5th season of The Crown will only start in 2022.

How to shoot a TV sex scene during Covid-19 - cue the mannequins.

■ How Hollywood accidentally built Netflix.


■ Let the Game of Thrones Video Streaming Wars begin.
With the launch of Peacock in the United States, there is now Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV+, Disney+, HBO Max, Quibi, Hulu and a few other video streaming services. Now we'll see - literally - who survives.
- Psst: Long-term success will be determined by the user experience (UE) - the way in which and experience viewers have in discovering and controlling the content.


■ How the on-screen depiction of romance is changing in Korea's "K-dramas" and disappointing viewers.
It has to do with ... marriage.

■ When did reality TV get so sexual?

■ How far is too far? The most-complained and disgusting TV commercials of the past decade in the United Kingdom and Australia.

■ The traditional linear TV business tries to adapt ...
...  left managing a melting ice-cube while they adapt operations for a video streaming future.

■ StarTimes Nigeria to add DreamWorks animation TV channel in September.

■ CAN (Christian Association of Nigeria) declares that M-Net's 5th season of Big Brother Naija on MultiChoice's DStv is evil.

■ Were the flashback scenes in the American drama series This Is Us seen on M-Net (DStv 101) filmed years in advance?

■ MultiChoice launches Enhanced Decoder Notification (EDN) for DStv decoders across Africa.
The new functionality adds icons that display different types of notifications on the Live TV screen

From October the episodes of several of your TV shows are finally going to start to become longer again as NBCUniversal cuts down on time for ads in America.

O hallelu, O hallelu, the TV angels did proclaim: From October the episodes of several of your TV shows are finally going to start getting a bit longer again instead of constantly shrinking in duration, after NBCUniversal announced its finally cutting down on the TV commercial clutter to try and keep linear TV viewers from fleeing.

Although NBCUniversal is doing this for the free-to-air and pay-TV channels that it runs and programmes, and for the TV shows it owns and shows on its channels in America, the effect of longer duration episodes and shows with less TV commercials will be the same for South African viewers when those will be shown here.

NBCUniversal announced that from its new fall season in America, meaning the 4th quarter of this year, it will be reducing "ad loads" by 20% during prime time and decrease the overall time given to ads during prime time by 10%.

What it means in ordinary language is that viewers will see less TV commercials during hour long and half hour shows, and more of the actual show. There will be 20% less ads per ad break, and 10% less ads during prime time shows.

Because there will be less ads per hour and less ad time per hour, the actual episode duration of some shows will increase.

This reduction in the number of adverts, as well as the total time per hour or half hour given to TV commercials, will apply to all 50 of NBCUniversal's prime time original shows across NBCUniversal's portfolio that includes channels like E!, NBC, and shows like This is Us seen on M-Net (DStv 101) and Keeping up with the Kardashians seen on E! (DStv 124).

Because episodes of This is Us on NBC will in response to less adds become longer than the 42 minutes due to less commercial time per episode, This is Us on M-Net will be longer as well.

What it means is that M-Net by default will be forced to show less ads during This is Us since less time will be available if the show is still to fit into a hour, in the way that episodes of HBO shows like Game of Thrones, Westworld and Big Little Lies have had longer than broadcast TV runtimes.

The same will now hold true for large number more TV shows like the Kardashians on E!, and for every other TV channel in South Africa that will be showing any of NBCUniversal's programming.

Because of the American change, it will likely mean changes for DStv Media Sales that's responsible for the ad sales and for managing the available inventory and commercial time that's available during episodes of shows and played out across several DStv channels and the M-Net packaged channels on the pay-TV platform.

MSNBC (StarSat 263), the news channel available on On Digital Media and StarTimes Media SA's StarSat for example and owned by NBCUniversal, is programmed and broadcast straight from America. Yet even here viewers in America as well as in South Africa will automatically see less ads than before.

"We know that the live, linear viewing experience needs to change," says Linda Yaccarino, chairman of advertising sales and client partnerships for NBCUniversal.

Part of reducing the ads is the addition of several new types of ads that NBCUniversal will be introducing in America to ad buyers soon.

The "scripted commercial launch" for instance will see an in-show moment transitioning into a commercial. For example a character on the drama series Suits could walk into a coffee shop and grab a drink, that would lead into a commercial for that drink.

Must-see TV back on M-Net from tonight - but be prepared for a lot of SNL, as This is Us, The Good Fight and American Gods push broadcasting boundaries even further.

Be prepared for SNL – and that doesn't stand for Saturday Night Live: Tonight M-Net (DStv 101) will envelop viewers on M-Net (DStv 101) as the pay-TV channel once again pushes the boundaries of African broadcasting as it frontloads its schedule with hour after hour of risque TV series.

From tonight M-Net is again pushing the boundaries even further of what can be shown on TV in South Africa and Africa, as the pay-TV broadcaster returns to a packed schedule of true “must-see” TV. Don’t say you weren’t warned.

Men are baring their butts in the excellent new drama series This Is Us starting at 19:30 as well as in The Good Fight starting at 20:30. 

Then there’s extremely risque language that range from the “F”-word and other mouths needing some soap cussing every which way in several of the new TV shows, and even a boyfriend matter-of-factly asking his girlfriend for “a handy” in This Is Us.

Throw in some lesbians in bed and then the craziest sex scene seen on TV yet – a man literally swallowed by a woman’s vagina during intercourse in the new drama America Gods starting at 22:00 – and M-Net is back with a bang with provocative American TV programming you need to make sure your DStv parental lock-out levels is set for, if you don’t want the kids to see.

So risque is American Gods that M-Net is only showing the Starz produced series on DStv in South Africa and some Southern African countries, and replacing the drama with other programming on the M-Net feed seen on MultiChoice’s DStv satellite pay-TV platform in East and West African countries.

There wasn’t an answer from M-Net as to why it deems American Gods not suitable for the rest of Africa, a new drama based on Neil Gaiman’s novel of the same name, revolving around mythical gods who’ve immersed themselves into American life.

The Good Fight, a new drama series spin-off to The Good Wife is likewise not your grandma’s legal eagle show.

This excellent series is made for an American streaming service and isn’t constrained by the “broadcast standards and practices” regulations of ordinary American TV. It means that the language, scenes and situations go far further than what TV viewers are used to.

The spin-off with 10 brilliant weekly episodes tackling fascinating cases together with an interesting overall story arch, follows Diane Lockhart (played by Christine Baranski) who is forced out of her legal practice and joins a new one.

Besides the new 6^th season of comedy Veep starting tonight at 21:30 the most unmissable new show is the fantastic drama series, This Is Us starting at 19:30 on M-Net.

To say too much about this “thirtysomething – the next generation” would be giving away too much but this moving new 18-episode drama series with Milo Ventimiglia, Mandy Moore, Justin Harley, Chrissy Metz and Sterling K. Brown revolves around different people who all share the same birthday and have different issues as they celebrate their 36th birthdays.

If the surprise hasn’t yet been spoilt for you, you will hugely enjoy the surprising and emotive twist at the end of the first episode of This Is Us that just won the MTV Movie & TV Awards category for “Best Tearjerker Moment in 2017” with the show that recently crowned “Top TV Program” by the American Film Institute.

Besides This is Us, The Good Fight and American Gods, M-Net has loaded its schedule with the new Twin Peaks, while local shows Wingin’ It, the second season of The Voice South Africa and Carte Blanche keep viewers transfixed on Sundays while nationwide auditions are taking place for My Kitchen Rules South Africa coming soon.

Also add Timeless, The Arrangement and Mozart in the Jungle and M-Net (DStv 101) has at the moment one of the strongest contemporaneous programming line-ups the channel has had in years.

TO CRY FOR. M-Net finally acquires This is Us - America's best reviewed and number one most watched new series of 2017 - but DStv subscribers will only get to see it from May.

That felt like it took ... almost 36 years: Something has been missing for the past 5 months from South Africa television - America's best new TV series - but now, finally, M-Net announced that it has acquired the broadcasting rights to This Is Us.

And We So Happy.

The series pick-up is great news, but there's also a bit of bad.

To even type it sounds so not right, but M-Net that is already five months behind will be even further behind, when This Is Us is finally scheduled to start in May 2017 on the M-Net (DStv 101) channel.

M-Net made the official announcement about This Is Us for the very first time directly on television on M-Net (DStv 101) on Sunday afternoon when probably nobody watched television (except me) during the first episode of M-Net's new weekly update show, The 101.

Presenter Donovan Goliath surprised by announcing that M-Net has acquired the broadcasting rights to This Is Us and will start showing it from sometime in May this year.

That means that M-Net and DStv subscribers will be 9 months behind America - about the same time as it takes for twins to grow and be born in a mommy's belly.

On to This is Us and why its special.

It's from NBC that gave us the disastrously bad Emerald City on VUZU AMP (DStv 103) that's over, gone and hopefully forgotten.

If you're old enough to remember thirtysomething that was on the SABC's TV1 - This Is Us gives viewers those exact family and friends feels, updated for this decade.

If you're younger, think Party of Five, My So-Called Life and Brothers & Sisters.

You will love love LOVE This Is Us - guaranteed. Which makes is so strange that M-Net waited so long to get This Is Us, and even longer to schedule America's best reviewed and number one most watched new TV series for 2017.

So good is This Is Us, that it's already been renewed for a second and a third season both in America - a huge vote of confidence from American network television in a prime time drama, where most shows struggle to just get a one season renewal at a time.

The first episode of This Is Us is a doozy and has a big, big twist right at the end. Don't read up about the show, don't look online, just tune in eventually in May and watch it without reading things about it.

It starts with all of the main characters who are getting ready to celebrate their 36th birthdays - on the same day. Of course they have divergent lives, each with their own emotional and life challenges.

They are all connected somehow (you find out pretty quickly how, for some of them) and it's brilliantly written and executed.

Yes. In 2017 there's still really great television, with This Is Us that tells stories that surprise in a way you've really never seen before, packs real emotional heart, pulls you in, and compels you too keep watching and to come back for another episode.

The wonderful This is Us cast has Milo Ventimiglia, Mandy Moore, Sterling K Brown, Chrissy Metz, Justin Hartley and Gerald McRaney who was Major Dad.

DAILY TV NEWS ROUND-UP. Today's interesting TV stories to read from TVwithThinus - 23 February 2017.

Here's the latest news about TV that I read, and that you should too:

■ Nigerian "invasion" planned on South African companies MultiChoice and MTN on Thursday.
Public protests want to "stampede" MultiChoice Nigeria and MTN in Lagos on Thursday because of xenophobic attacks in South Africa.

■ Take a guess how many TV news channels there are in India?
Almost 400! And now a new TV news channel RepublicTV launching soon wants to enter the competition.

■ BBC will start a new TV channel for Scotland in 2018.
BBC Scotland will focus on drama and factual content and an hour-long news programme.


■ British mumbling mars BBC's latest TV series SS-GB.
Viewers are once again complaining that they can't hear properly. This time its the new alt-history series SS-GB starting soon on BBC First (DStv 119) in South Africa.
Is the problem new flat-screen TV sets?

Meanwhile SS-GB has "cliched, clunky, dialogue delivered at a snail's pace".
The BBC says it will again look at what's wrong after all of the sound complaints.
More than 1.5million viewers of the 7 million who started watching the drama series that used the wrong model of Spitfire,  tuned away amidst the BBC "mumbling row".
The TV is hard to hear, says The Wall Street Journal, but you can fix that.


■ Spanish TV gossip shows
violated the rights of a singer by discussing her sex life on the private TV channels, the European Court of Human Rights finds.

■ This is Us is now American television's biggest hit.
Yet its nowhere in South Africa, not on M-Net (DStv 101), not on DStv, e.tv or anywhere else. Vanity Fair has the story on how the great emoti-drama in which "nice people really like each other" dethroned The Big Bang Theory.

■ Pakistan TV drama in trouble over the lesbians.
Pakistan's media regulator tells Hum TV the "topic of homosexuality is against our values" after two women are shown being in a relationship.

■ Turkish TV dramas are slowly conquering the world.
The Turkish delights are apparently even responsible for a less fighting in Gaza during the afternoons.

■ Something for 7de Laan?
Perhaps an idea for SABC2's viewership shedding soap? Australia's soap Home and Away sees rating spikes with stories about hunks caring for babies.

■ China's relaunched CGTN (DStv 409 / StarSat 266) apologises for wrong Somaliland map.
"Terribly sorry" for Somalia map bungle, says wrong Africa map "was a mistake by one of our editors and does not in any way reflect the standpoint of the Chinese government".

■ Shock in Brazil as TV channel reveals dancer will have to wear clothes
for the first time in 26 years on TV Globo's coverage of upcoming Rio Carnival.

■ American pay-TV boss warns:
Pay-TV subscribers are going to continue to flee if traditional pay-TV services "continue to raise prices and continue to have 16 to 18 minutes of advertising per hour".

■ Don't cry for the laugh track.
Inside the morbid secret of one of the classic TV sitcom's most annoying tools.

■ Study finds millennial men are abandoning pay-TV in droves.
Young guys are not just no longer paying for television, they're simply quitting watching TV.

■ An American rightwinger says he has "tapes" about CNN and will release it on Thursday.
Says he has a "few hundreds hours" of material recorded inside CNN that he will release as "CNN Leaks".

■ A whopping number of pay-TV channels - 127 - in India are showing too much ads.
Who knew a rule capping ads on a pay-TV channel to 12 minutes per hour existed somewhere in the world?
Several Indian TV channels also seen in South Africa went way over the prescribed 12 minute cap, like B4U Movies, SUN TV, Star Plus, Colors, SET Max.

Why did M-Net put Emerald City on Vuzu AMP on DStv when this Games of Thrones like show clearly belongs on M-Net Edge?

A woman is shown stabbed and killed from the back, explicitly pierced by a sword. In a whore house soldiers are sexed. A woman (a witch actually) is shown blowing her brains out and toppling over, while three young women are seen jumping to their deaths in a "hanging" suicide.

In another scene a murdered soldier's chopped off pieces (head etc.) is shown, while winter is literally coming and has now arrived as snowflakes sift down because of a problem with magic.

If you think it's the latest new episode from the upcoming 7th season of Game of Thrones on M-Net Edge (DStv 102), guess again.

It's scenes from the inappropriately placed and scheduled new American fantasy drama series Emerald City on Vuzu AMP (DStv 102) on a channel where DStv subscribers in their content discovery process won't expect to find it, and where it doesn't actually belong.

The at times graphic show - now four episodes in and one of M-Net's Express from the US titles - has been placed on the youth-centric Vuzu AMP although its much more similar in nature in look, sense, feel and some graphic depictions, to fantasy dramas like Game of Thrones, Vikings and Beowulf.

Guess on what M-Net channel on MultiChoice's DStv these types of shows are actually shown.

Somebody at M-Net acquired Emerald City and didn't bother to actually watch it. For Emerald City isn't Vuzu AMP's The Vampire Diaries.

If you like more mature fantasy drama series you will like Emerald City, a sort of deconstructed and definitely post-modernist version of the classic story about Dorothy who gets whisked away by tornado to a mystical new land where she meets up with a hodge-potch group all looking for the Wizard of Oz.

The steampunk fantasy series has a lot of unfolding, surprising twists but the problem is that some viewers might not know of its existence on the Pretty Little Liars channel.

If only there were a bit of heart. If only there were a bit of bravery. If only there were a bit of brains.

Watching Emerald City on Vuzu AMP it feels as if M-Net wants viewers to watch content (and yes, Emerald City is good content) that people in the acquisitions and scheduling teams don't watch themselves. Or, if it is pre-watched, and still scheduled wrongly, then it borders on borderline incompetence.

If The Magicians (based on a book) and a series meant for mature audiences was shown on M-Net Edge - in which characters in a magical environment battle themselves, each other and adversaries to find answers and survive - why is Emerald City (based on a book) now a series meant for mature audiences placed on Vuzu AMP as a show in which characters in a magic environment battle themselves, each other and adversaries to find answers and survive?

Another issue: In America Emerald City is an NBC show. Strikingly the new TV season's biggest new hit drama series, This is Us, is nowhere to be seen anywhere in South Africa.

It begs the question: Why has This Is Us not been acquired by M-Net - or e.tv? A show in which American TV bosses have so much confidence that it was just renewed not just for a second but also for a third season?

And if This is Us (soo good!) is eventually seen in South Africa, how much of the entertainment value will be gone because viewers will already have been told, or have read somewhere about the emotional twists and fascinating plot twists that were all well guarded secrets in the first episode and subsequent hours of this terrific new series?

With both Emerald City and This is Us South African TV viewers are not being considered and served as paying TV customers as well as they should be.

If only viewers, like the Wizard of Oz, were able to quickly summon a witch (or a giant) to fix it, when something like this that's clearly a TV mistake, went wrong.