by Thinus Ferreira
e.tv has launched the South African broadcaster's homegrown video streaming service, eVOD (e-Video-On-Demand) as a so-called freemium streamer with over 2 500 hours of content at launch, including different premium subscription tiers for exclusive content.
e.tv plans to spend at least R100 million per year on creating brand-new local content for eVOD that will include 4 eOriginal series and 10 original South African feature films, and the plan is to add the streaming of live linear TV channels on eVOD in the future.
As e.tv is a free-to-air commercial broadcaster, eVOD offers thousands of hours of free library content that is available after a customer registers an eVOD profile.
eVOD also offers daily (R5 for 24 hours), weekly (R15) and monthly (R29.99) subscriptions, giving a viewer access to all content and offering more exclusive content including a first-run eOriginal movie, and access to the next week's 5 episodes of e.tv's top local prime soaps and telenovelas in a functionality called FastForward (FF).
eVOD subscribers can for instance watch the first episode of the new local drama series Is'phindiselo before broadcast, as well as Atlantis, the first eVOD Original movie in which a young woman sets out to find her missing brother involved in a gang and starring Bronte Snel, Maurice Carpede, Chumani Pan, Keenan Arrison and Ettienne Gertse.
eVOD customers can pay with debit or credit cards, airtime or partner billing with e.tv that has partnered with MTN and with MTN customers who register for eVOD who get 4GB data free monthly until 31 January 2022 that can only be used to watch eVOD content.
eVOD is available to download as an app for mobile devices on the Google Play and Apple's App Store, and is online at www.evod.co.za as a browser experience for computers.
e.tv's existing "e On Demand" website service where people could watch Catch Up episodes of shows, will now redirect users to the eVOD website.
eVOD launches in South Africa just a day before BritBox SA that is launching on 6 August with the country that is adding two new video streaming services in an already crowded video-on-demand space and where the South African public broadcaster plans to launch its own SABC VOD service, modelled on the BBC's Player, before the end of the year.
Besides eVOD and BritBox SA, South African consumers already have access to MultiChoice's Showmax, Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Apple TV+ that are all competing with PCCW Media's VIU, Vodacom Video Play and TelkomONE.
Consumers are still waiting for other global streamers like WarnerMedia's HBO Max, along with Disney+, Paramount+, NBCUniversal's Peacock and Discovery+ to launch locally.
"We decided to meet our audience in places where they will be at - so if not on the TV set, on the mobile, or on the PC, and eventually they will get the eVOD content again on TV," said Khalik Sherrif, eMedia Holdings CEO, the eVOD virtual launch event on Wednesday night.
"We have a huge following in South Africa through e.tv and all the other TV channels and we understand in our business that our customers and audiences are changing on a daily basis these days, getting content through means that we didn't conceive of 10 years ago - the TV has evolved from analogue to DTH to DTT and the last couple of years we went to OTT."
Multiple new eOriginal series, films planned
Marlon Davids, e.tv managing director said that "the investment in the local broadcasting industry will be R100 million per year - that's what our investment is going to be - and it will include at least 4 eOriginal series for eVOD, as well as at least 10 local movies per year".
"Atlantis is available to watch on eVOD and up until the end of March 2022 next year we will launch another 4 movies, and possibly 2 more. In a full financial year there will always be 10 movies that we will launch."
Excluding Atlantis that is already on eVOD, the other eOriginal films will be available on a T-VOD basis on eVOD as a transactional video-on-demand offering.
"This means that eVOD users will pay a to-be-determined once-off fee to watch a movie because it won't be available on TV or in cinemas and will be territory premieres," Marlon Davids said. The price for T-VOD films has not been decided yet.
"A big part of eVOD will be Catch Up, so users will be able to watch last night's episode of series like Durban Gen or House of Zwide or even the Turkish telenovelas dubbed into Afrikaans."
"In that space we know that viewers are obsessed with those shows like Gebroke Harte, so we will also offer FastForward for Elif to see the next 5 episodes that will still be broadcast on the eExtra channel."
"Also some of these Turkish drama series that haven't been on e.tv channels before will now premiere on eVOD even before it goes to one of our linear TV channels."
"After Is'phindiselo our 13-part series that has already been renewed for a second 13-episode season, we will launch another one towards mid-September called Housewives, that is in production."
Plan to move e.tv content to eVOD
e.tv told TVwithThinus that its existing shows like soaps of which Catch Up rights have been licensed to MultiChoice's DStv Now will remain accessible on that pay-TV provider's streaming service but e.tv's content is no longer available on VIU and has been moved to eVOD.
"As our contractual obligations ride themselves out, we're consolidating our content on our OTT service which is the logical thing to do," Khalik Sherrif said.
"We are introducing what is the mass audience of South Africa to content that is now going to be streamed. As data becomes cheaper, the numbers will grow. But we had to be in this business. We had to start somewhere."
