M-Net warps Seth MacFarlane's new science fiction comedy-drama series, The Orville, for a 13 August star(t)date.

M-Net (DStv 101) has acquired the broadcasting rights to the new series The Orville created by Seth MacFarlane.

M-Net tells TVwithThinus that the science fiction comedy-drama series taking place in the 25th century, is preliminary set to start on M-Net on Monday 13 August at 17:00.

The timeslot of The Orville might likely still change to a later time due to the content and nature of the show.

The first season of The Orville have been well received, with the first season that continues to improve over the course of its 12 episodes and has been a much better show that the revived Star Trek: Discovery from CBS Access that's available on Netflix South Africa.

Seth MacFarlane that created The Orville, and who is a huge Star Trek: The Next Generation fan, also stars in the show as Ed Mercer, who is the captain of The Orville, a ship of the Planetary Union.

His ex-wife, Kelly Grayson (Adrianne Palicki) becomes his first officer, with Penny Johnson Jerald as Doctor Claire Finn, the chief medical officer.

Lieutenant Gordon Malloy (Scott Grimes) is the helmsman and Ed's best friend, Lieutenant Commander Bortus (Peter Macon) is the second officer and an alien from a single-gender race, Lieutenant Alara Kitan (Halston Sage) is the super-strong, young security officer, and Lieutenant John LaMarr (J. Lee) is the navigator.

Isaac (Mark Jackson) is the android and science and engineering officer who is from a non-biological race who is onboard to study humans.

Most of The Orville stories are surprisingly good with viewers who won't be able to guess the outcome in some, although there are somewhat too many episodes dealing with the tension between religion and science.

South Africa's Charlize Theron makes her appearance as a villain in one episode during the first season with The Orville that has already been renewed for a second season.

The Orville is produced by Fuzzy Door Productions and 20th Century Fox Television.

2018's TV TRENDS MASTER CLASS: David Abraham at the MultiChoice Digital Dialogue Conference unpacks the big TV trends shaping the world right now - and what it means for Africa's broadcasters.

In a hugely informative session, sharing a wealth of insight and background information, the British TV executive David Abraham unpacked the big and seismic TV trends - and how they are interlocking, at the recent 5th edition of the Digital Dialogue Conference.

He explained how the TV trends impacting America and the United Kingdom - some that already here and those that will be making their way to Africa soon - are fundamentally upending and altering the television and pay-TV broadcasting industry, and what it means for broadcasters and anyone working in television across Africa.

David Abraham, founder of Wonderhood Studios, and who was the chief executive of Channel 4 in the United Kingdom between 2010 and 2017, was one of the speakers at the 5th Digital Dialogue Conference that took place in May in Dubai in the United Arab Emirate (UAE), organised by MultiChoice.

In his highly informative talk about the TV trends shaping the world right now and that will be impacting TV and broadcasters in Africa - and are already - he started at the beginning, saying that the pay-TV market "was based on the premise of dependable walls, economic walls, between content, and the consumer".

"Those walls are either in some instances breaking or cracking - or in some countries even disappearing for a whole host of reasons."

Speaking about the UK, as an example, he said that "analogue TV was free at the point of consumption, regulated by the regulator Ofcom, and the dominant players were public service broadcasters that held public licences and had public obligations."

"Then arrived in the 80's and 90's, slowly at first, analogue satellite TV and then cable TV. And it took many years for those businesses to develop but essentially it was a balanced ecosystem of cable, satellite and free TV."

"And there were polite walls around some of the content, that drove the value equation for the pay-TV operators - primarily sport. But everyone kind of co-operated and in a sense the consumer had to go through quite a lot of hassle to move between the two different systems. So there was a lot of friction and therefore there was a lot of bundling of content."

"The phrase Balkanisation has been used in terms of how pay-TV operators constantly had to put up higher walls around their content in order to justify the exclusivity and the big bundles that they would charge their consumers,"said David Abraham.

"The way that I see these markets moving now, is that these walls are cracking and actually the arrival of the internet has really changed everything for the way in which these operators can plan for their futures."

"So the future is much more messy; it is much more heterogeneous, and what we are going to find are going to be a number of different models co-existing and overlapping in a much, much more confusing way."

"The world that we are entering is much more frictionless, it's much more fragmented. The global pressure of the digital giants, the scale, and the way that everything is far more trans-national than every before, has meant that this rather neat world of walled gardens that co-existed is changing very, very rapidly."

David Abraham said 4 things are driving this in the UK, in an evermore intensive way: increasing broadband penetration, smartphone penetration, tablet penetration, and connected televisions either within the TV set or through set-top boxes.

"So there are 4 interlocking trends that are leading to fundamental changes to how pay-TV models are evolving."

"It's always been the case that younger people watched fewer hours of TV per day and per week. But we have seen a fundamental reduction in the number of hours of TV being watched by younger demographics."

Moving to the United States, he said "for many, many years we saw pay-television subscriber growth in the US - very expensive bundles for consumers - the APU, the average revenue per user was growing, and now the trend is consistently down for traditional pay-television in the United States."

"Now, it's worth mentioning a couple of things. The US isn't this balanced eco-system we've got in the UK because pay-television is in 99% of all homes, also most pay-television channels carry advertising with very, very high advertising loads. The level of interruption of your television viewing is extremely high."

"And the result of that of course is if there is a proposition that comes in at a lower price point and no advertising interruption, then that proposition is going to grow. And clearly that proposition is the phenomenon that is Netflix."

"If you're thinking of the economics of making an expensive drama or buying expensive sports rights, there's a consistent trend of fragmentation of viewing over different time-slices and over different technologies. And that made the environment in which we're operating a lot messier, a lot more complex and a lot more difficult to manage."


Impact of the 'Digital Giants' on content
"The question has now become the scale of the digital giants and what they might do, and are beginning to do, to exploit that scale, in relation to every other business model in every market."

"Effectively each of these digital players - Google, Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix - they can exploit very particular attributes in their technology to draw audiences ever further away from their traditional patterns of behaviour," explained David Abraham.

"So they have all been experimenting with very expensive content. Amazon bought the Top Gear team and rebranded it The Grand Tour, Netflix has The Crown already, Google through YouTube Red and Facebook Watch that has been launched and is being rolled out."

"What this has driven is an original production boom among the existing, legacy television platform players who are all now responding to this competition by commissioning very expensive, very glossy dramas, because effectively Netflix has driven a box-set behavioural pattern which is being perceived by the consumer to have proper value, and which now has to be reflected in the way that traditional pay-TV operators commission their own, original content."

Box-sets and binge-watching
The other big phenomenon is box-sets and binge-watching has effectively been a cultural phenomenon that young people have massively over-indexed in," said David Abraham.

"I'm sure many of you have experienced this within your family, is that a young child growing up now as a so-called "digital native" is actually entering a world where they have very little concept of a linear TV channel with channel continuity and announcers and something going on at a particular moment in the day."

"Everything they're consuming is binge-watched and on-demand."

"One of the things in the UK is that traditional broadcasters operate according to guidelines in terms of the watershed [time period], protecting children from certain content where the internet doesn't operate like that at all."

"It will be very interesting how African countries will negotiate those taste and decency issues [around content] in an environment where for parents, and for regulators and for leaders there will be a sense of wanting to protect the population in certain environments that are safe and of high quality."

So brand will still matter. Quality will still matter and content will always be king."


Fixed-line operators and sharing sports content rights
"Across Europe the traditional pay-TV markets are becoming more competitive. Telecom operators have proven to be the most potent challengers to those traditional pay-TV operators and competition is heating up around scripted," said David Abraham.

He said fixed-line operators are stepping up too, with some of these operators across Europe also getting into the content acquisition business.

"Interestingly many of these operators are distributing Netflix on their set-top boxes."

"So inevitably you get this evermore complex environment where these legacy players are now bringing in their competitors within their platform propositions."

"Sky that always effectively had the biggest pay-wall around its business model, is going to provide Netflix within its services in the course of the next 12 months which is a strong indication of how things are changing."

"For the first time in the history of Sky, towards the end of last year, they made their Sky Sports channels available to their main competitor BT and BT Sports packages and Sky Sports packages available via cable through Virgin."

"Now the effect of this is very interesting because we had escalating costs of English Premier League (EPL) football rights in the UK that were exponential and that were really challenging the viability of these pay-TV models in the UK - it became almost unaffordable."

"But by allowing to share each others' services, the main players - BT, Virgin and Sky - effectively have put a cap on the growth in the pricing of the EPL packages in the UK."

Consumers using different service simultaneously
"The market in the UK is now driven by two distinct trends: the bundling of pay-TV and telecom services at the upper end, and the rise of cheaper over-the-top (OTT) services at the lower end, said David Abraham.

But besides that, it is also not a black-or-white, either-or model anymore, he explained. Sky now has around 10 million subscribers in the UK, and Netflix UK has over 7 million.

"People are no longer either on satellite, or cable or free TV - you effectively use these OTT services because they're cheaper, and you're using these services whilst also quite probably also using satellite paying your monthly subscription and maybe for broadband as well."

"The inter-relationship between the broadband-relationship, the mobile-relationship, the channel-relationship and then the OTT services is getting evermore complex. Frankly what consumers are doing is switching much more, effectively the switching between services has gone down and consumers are moving around."

"Consumers also don't like to hear about a big show that they can't get. So they might dip in for a month and binge-watch a show and dip out for a while and go to another service. And remember that these services are available on multiple devices - so a much more fluid environment in which these players are operating."

"What this is doing, is putting pressure on margins because obviously the old system of big bundles had a very high margin - there was a lot of friction between consumers moving around and now that is eroding."

"There's an intensification of these trends. So satellite pay-TV is effectively losing customers in the UK. Broadband growth is also slowing and that's also having an effect on the bundling between broadband and TV services, and the winners in all of this are the subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) services."

"A very complex environment is evolving and all of these things overlap and that has big implications for the future of public broadcasting in the UK because this environment is so much more fragmented."

"For public broadcasters investing in journalism and investing in quality coverage and in coverage that is locally relevant will always have a very important role to play."

New players and models
David Abraham next explained some of the new players and models that are emerging.

"iflix from Asia is already in Africa. This is a very interesting model because effectively it's a developing market model that says Netflix will always be too expensive outside the Western world and there are many rights which in the developing world, are being pirated."

"So this entrepreneur in Asia simply built a business model by going around all of the markets in Asia and looked at what all of the pirated material was, and he created lists of the best-selling pirated material but online through streaming data and through DVD sales, and then he went to the studios and said listen, the price point between the pirated material and Netflix is this big, we'll put it on this service and he branded it iflix. It's an OTT service and it's now in at least 25 countries."

"It's an example of a model that says, if Netflix can't succeed in markets with relatively low income versus Europe and the US, then what model might emerge? And the iflix model is one that a lot of people are looking at very closely."

"Secondly, Cheddar in the US is described as a post-cable channel. Effectively the proposition here is what would Bloomberg look like if it was appealing only to millenials?  And this is what this channel is," said David Abraham.

"This channel is partly a linear channel, it's partly available through social media. So it has a flexible model - it offers operates through the reach of social media, but it is also available as a internet protocol (IP) streamed service. It's doing quite well, it's small, but it's growing."

"If we are thinking of what is the future of the 'TV channel' in a world where we have that level of broadband and mobile penetration, and that scale of influence that social media has, then something like Cheddar might be a sign of things to come in terms of the notion of a linear TV channel."

"In France there's a service called Molotov that's having hundreds of millions of dollars pumped into it.This is a solution to younger people not regarding live, linear TV as for them anymore."

"Molotov attempts to present television in an entirely new way. It is entirely internet protocol (IP) delivered, with original content and acquired content bundled together. It is making headway in France, it has huge investment behind it and it will be very interesting to see if they succeed."

"So I think that television broadcasters can adapt - but they absolutely can't stand still. And at the heart of this is who is owning the consumer relationship."

SABC to establish an internal ombudsman for SABC News complaints.

The SABC will introduce an internal ombudsman for SABC News complaints from the public and establish a ring-fenced office to deal with queries and issues regarding SABC News editorial and coverage, the South African public broadcaster announced on Monday night.

Chris Maroleng, SABC COO, in an interview with Ashraf Garda on SAfm on Monday night, said "we, through the reform and transformation of the newsroom will also introduce what we are describing as an internal ombud who will allow the public to complain".

The surprising move - not prompted through any external pressure on the SABC - is the latest in a sudden string of positive self-correcting changes at the SABC.

The South African Broadcasting Corporation in the past few weeks announced an inquiry into undue influence on SABC News and its editorial processes, an inquiry into allegations of sexual harassment and sexual abuse inside the SABC, as well as a rebranding of the SABC News service on television and radio.

The SABC's internal ombudsman will function independently, and in addition to the existing Broadcasting Complaints Commission of South Africa (BCCSA) whose Broadcasting Code of Conduct the SABC already subscribes to.

The SABC is currently busy with a long-overdue review of the public broadcaster's editorial policy that started in July 2017, trying to bring it up to date since it was last reviewed 14 years ago in 2004.


SAfm changed explained
About the changes at SAfm and listeners who are unhappy with the news and current affairs changes, Chris Maroleng said the anger has to do with how people have become "accustomed to consuming their news and current affairs. The first thing is that we were over-delivering on SAfm on news and current affairs".

"What we were doing is we were producing 6 hours of news and current affairs and the problem with news and current affairs apart from the crucial importance, the way in which we packaged it, is it could not perform commercially to the extent that it supported the broadcast network which is quite extensive for SAfm."

"It was costing us several million. The other thing that we did, we needed to migrate the way that news and current affairs was consumed to a format that was more accustomed to the way that some of our competitors - and more importantly, the global trend of global news consumption - has changed."

"So we developed opportunities around talk radio format content, mixed in with our current affairs obligation, without dropping the mandated, regulatory provision for that current affairs content. So the value judgment we had to make, is how do we develop news content and a news platform that develops conversation and that allows debate in a vibrant, independent way, without putting too much of a burden on the commercial imperative."


Sakina Kamwendo: We should have informed public better
About the shocking removal of Sakina Kamwendo from SAfm's morning slot that saw SAfm producers abruptly censor her and yank her off air during her last show, leaving people listening to music to fill dead air, Chris Maroleng said that the SABC censorship and lack of communication "is a personal regret of mine".

"In our haste to try and fix it and to try and put right things that needed to be made better within the SABC we need to bring along people. We need to understand that it is ultimately people who come from  a very difficult period of abuse, of abuse of power, of unfair decisions being made which were not necessarily in the interest of the SABC."

He said the censorship of Sakina Kamwendo and her abrupt removal "was not an intention to shut [her] down". "We could have done much better in ensuring that the way in which we communicated the rationale of the change, could have been done much better," said Chris Maroleng.

"What we did wrong - I think what we should have done better is also inform our public a bit better," he said.

The SABC that launched an internal investigation into what happened on the day has refused to make the findings public.

MultiChoice content boss Aletta Alberts talks 'Project Repeats' and why DStv subscribers can't choose their own channels: 'In future, we might try a more hybrid approach'.

MultiChoice's content boss, Aletta Alberts, in a speech in Windhoek, addressed the pan-African pay-TV operator's ongoing process of reducing the volume of repeats DStv subscribers are exposed to, and about the issue of why DStv viewers can't choose and pay for just the channels they want to, hinted at a possible change, saying that "in future, might we might try a more hybrid approach".

Aletta Alberts, MultiChoice's general manager for content, spoke to the press last week Thursday at MultiChoice Namibia's country headquarters in Windhoek.

She spoke to the media about what the Naspers pay-TV giant is doing to cut down on the number of repeats DStv subscribers are seeing - an initiative under the banner of "Project Repeats".

Once again the issue was also raised about why pay-TV operators like MultiChoice can't give subscribers the option of individually choosing just the TV channels they want and paying for that, instead of bundling channels together.

Aletta Alberts hinted that there is the possibility that some changes might be coming in future in the form of a hybrid approach, according to The Namibian newspaper that attended the session.

"When you give the consumers choice, it actually comes back to the same model we use," said Aletta Alberts. "In future, we might try a more hybrid approach, but at the moment, there's a cost issue."

According to Roger Gertze, MultiChoice Namibia's general manager, repeats on DStv have been one of the leading grievances from DStv subscribers after MultiChoice Namibia did a customer feedback survey.

"We do repeats - we have to own up to it. But it's a part of the current business model," said Aletta Alberts. She explained how its impossible for a single TV channel not to do a rebroadcast of content, since a TV channel requires about 8 760 hours of content a year to fill.

No TV channel in the world that can produce that must see-it-only-once content. The enormous licensing cost of the sports content rights on the SuperSport channels for instance, must also be absorbed by more people than just the smaller audience watching that.

"Our content is bundled so it's not clear to the customer what they are paying for. Sports rights, for example, are pricey and as much as they are loved, not enough people are watching these channels," explained Aletta Alberts.

Another interesting fact is that 70% of the repeat complaints are due to movies being reshown.

"The same movie and series titles are repeated across multiple channels," said Aletta Alberts. "DStv Premium customers see all these channels, but they don't understand that we're making them for lower tiered channels as well."

Besides axing a number of channels like Discovery Networks's Animal Planet, M-Net Edge, CBS Drama, True Movies, AMC, and tiering down VUZU and doing limited-run pop-up channels, MultiChoice has ordered some channels to schedule some new content over weekends like documentaries, to do less "stacking" - meaning marathon series repeats.

MultiChoice also has a plan to introduce DStv subscribers to more programmes outside of their comfort zone so that they will sample some programming they might not have watched, and then discovery they like to see.

"In 2010 there were 210 series from the United States; in October 2017 there were 500. Every day, someone has millions of dollars they're putting into content and we are still buying every piece of content that comes out of the studios," said Aletta Alberts.

"Every year, we do more local content and try to increase it as much as we can, but it's expensive to put things in an indigenous language. However, we've got great models, and it's starting to pay off and gain momentum," Aletta Alberts explained.

Broadcasting Complaints Commission bodyslams MultiChoice over contravening code and showing violent WWE SuperSport promo to toddlers.

MultiChoice got bodyslammed by the Broadcasting Complaints Commission for contravening the Broadcasting Code of Conduct with the BCCSA that has rapped the satellite pay-TV over the knuckles for showing an inappropriate wrestling promo for SuperSport that's inappropriate for children.

The Broadcasting Complaints Commission of South Africa (BCCSA) found that while watching a cricket match with his two children aged 3 and 7 on SuperSport, MultiChoice exposed the family to a WWE promo shown outside of the so-called "watershed period" and without any parental advisory indicators.

A viewer complained to the BCCSA that while watching cricket on SuperSport (DStv 202) that carries no age restriction, SuperSport suddenly did a WWE promo "which plays on another channel and has a higher age restriction".

"The content of the advert is violent and is inappropriate for children. My kids have now been exposed to this violent content and my 3 year old has started emulating what he sees on this advert. He is a boy, and naturally he is inclined to want to repeat this kind of behaviour. My problem is that SuperSport is playing age restricted content on a family channel, during a family program."

The viewer asked the BBCSA to "please take appropriate action against this channel as they are continually violating their own age restriction policy" after his kid emulated what he saw and said "Look, daddy, I'm doing double double E".

The BBCSA found that the promo was broadcast before the watershed with no advanced warning to enable parents to prevent their children from being exposed to it and said that "promos broadcast before the watershed during family time, should not contain violent scenes".

The BCCSA said it's not the first time that it received a complaint in this regard about wrestling programming.

MultiChoice and SuperSport were not fined but the BCCSA said "we consider it reasonable to reprimand the broadcaster and we caution the licensee to avoid broadcasting violent promotional material outside the watershed period".

MultiChoice CEO Calvo Mawela's stark warning to 'Game of Thrones'-like SA TV biz: It's coming for all of us.

South Africa's biggest pay-TV operator MultiChoice that says it is facing unprecedented danger from global streaming services like Netflix and Amazon, has a stark Game of Thrones-like warning for the entire South African TV biz, including the SABC and e.tv: It's not just threatening us - it's threatening all of us.

MultiChoice, Africa's largest pay-TV operator, told South Africa's broadcasting regulator earlier this month that Netflix is a threat and caused the loss of over 100 000 DStv Premium subscribers during just the last financial year.

The Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa) is once again conducting an inquiry into South Africa's pay-TV sector and is looking at, and will consider, how to possibly amend regulations.

MultiChoice is arguing for South Africa's broadcasting regulator to urgently implement regulations on global streaming services like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video operating in South Africa, instead of imposing even more onerous regulations on video entertainment businesses like MultiChoice.

The global over-the-top (OTT) streamers for instance don't pay local taxes and are not encumbered by things like local content quotas and other regulatory restrictions.

MultiChoice wants Amazon Prime Video and Netflix South Africa to be regulated - similar to what the European Union (EU) is currently implementing in terms of 30% local content quotas and tax requirements.

In their various submissions to the inquiry about what's wrong with the local TV biz, all of South Africa's broadcasters kept blaming the bigger wolf, with all of them ganging up on MultiChoice.

Community TV blamed MultiChoice and bigger broadcasters, with the SABC and e.tv in turn blaming MultiChoice, and MultiChoice in turn blaming what it sees as the bigger wolf at the door: global streamers like Netflix and its ilk rolling out localised offerings like Netflix South Africa.

TVwithThinus in an interview with MultiChoice CEO Calvo Mawela, asked him if MultiChoice feels as if it's stuck in the middle - between free-to-air broadcasters on the one hand and global streamers on the other - and he said no.

"We are all in the same situation. As a satellite pay-TV operator we are using technology that started 30 years ago in terms of direct-to-home (DTH) and linear television as we traditionally know it. But linear broadcasters are feeling the same pain as we are feeling - that people are no longer engaging as much with linear, 'appointment viewing' when delivering content. Viewers are moving online."

"What I find interesting is that the free-to-air channels like the SABC and e.tv think that the threat coming from over-the-top (OTT) players like Netflix and Amazon are still a bit further away," said Calvo Mawela.

"But that's how disruptive technology is. I think if they are not careful, they will not have a business tomorrow, similar to how print newspapers are struggling today to run a business because some of them thought 'we'll continue to survive' while they saw online coming. Today they're struggling to make a business case to survive due to online consumption of news."

"As MultiChoice we are saying we really need to recognise that online consumption is here, and it is today, and if we do not come up with business plans that address the needs of consumers who are clear that they want to consumer their content online, this TV industry will be dead in the not-too-distant future."

"Traditional television is facing a big threat of survival and if we don't change our business model, we will end up being monuments of what used to be once-successful companies if we don't move quickly to online."

Calvo Mawela was asked what advice or warning he has for South Africa's TV industry that seems to have, just like the hit fantasy drama series Game of Thrones on M-Net (DStv 101), many different power players all squabbling and fighting among themselves for TV territory, instead of collectively keeping an eye of the bigger looming danger and the winter that's coming: the big broadband TV revolution behind the wall.

"Let me start by showing the positives of old, traditional television and caution anybody that tries to regulate us more and more. We are an industry that is still majority owned by South Africans from an equity level - one of the very few industries that are still like that."

"What we see with the proliferation of global streaming services is that if they are left unregulated and if people keep pushing for us to be regulated more and more, all of the investment that has gone into traditional pay-TV becomes under threat."

"The investment in terms of local TV productions and the people that are working in this industry are also going to be affected because global streaming services don't have to employ anybody. They don't have to have a local presence in this country - Netflix in South Africa and Africa is run from Amsterdam," said Calvo Mawela.

"All the licence fees that we are paying, our contributions to GDP, our contributions to universal service and access, are all going to be affected badly if the broadcasting regulator keeps on focusing on regulating us more and more and they allow free reign for over-the-top players."

"We think it will be unfair and they need to level the playing field to make sure that like-for-like services are regulated the same."


ALSO READ: Why MultiChoice isn't giving DStv subscribers access to Netflix: "We treat Netflix as pure competition".
ALSO READ: MultiChoice boss warns the Naspers pay-TV giant isn't being alarmistic about the online threat of global video services to DStv: 'Satellite pay-TV will disappear'.
ALSO READ: Cape Town Television (CTV) makes shocking revelations to the broadcasting regulator about how all of South Africa's community TV stations are dependent on money from the pay-TV giant, MultiChoice, for their survival.
ALSO READ: e.tv warns South Africa's broadcasting regulator, Icasa, that the free-to-air broadcasting sector in the country is under threat and needs urgent protection as a new inquiry into SA's pay-TV market kicks off.

After botched 2017 attempt, Cricket South Africa and SuperSport announce a joint venture to establish a new, annual T20 cricket tournament to kick off in November 2018.

Cricket South Africa (CSA) and SuperSport announced a new broadcast deal and a new company, to establish a new, as-yet-unnamed, annual T20 cricket tournament that will start in November 2018 to replace the flopped version that flamed out in October 2017.

The planned tournament imploded when CSA and SuperSport failed to come to terms over the pegged price of the broadcasting rights which saw CSA fire its then CEO, Haroon Lorgat over the shambles.

SuperSport as existing right-holder refused to cough up more for for the planned tournament while CSA saw it as a new venture not covered by existing deals.

Now CSA and SuperSport are forming a new company, in which CSA will be the majority shareholder and both will contribute capital to fund the new venture.

SuperSport that will broadcast the tournament throughout sub-Saharan Africa and the adjacent islands, "and provide a broadcast feed to international broadcasters".

The annual, new T20 tournament will take place for the first time in November and December 2018.

"We have put the problems we experienced with the proposed Global T20 League behind us and look forward to hosting the new competition," says Thabang Moroe, acting CSA CEO.

"This event will create wonderful opportunities for local players, including current Proteas and up and coming youngsters, to hone their white-ball skills."

Gideon Khobane, SuperSport CEO, says "This agreement sees our relationship taken to the next level, where we will pool our mutual resources in a partnership which will create high-quality cricket and provide entertaining content for cricket fans locally and broadcast viewers both domestically and globally".

"To have Proteas and international stars competing together with local talent will improve the quality of T20 cricket produced by South Africa."

SABC board member, Kgalema Mohuba, placed on special leave by the University of Limpopo that is investigating claims around the doctorate degree he was working on.

The SABC has not suspended, placed on leave or removed its board member Kgalema Mohuba who has now been placed on special leave by the University of Limpopo where he is the publicist, amidst an investigation into the doctorate degree he was busy with and that the university decided not to award.

The University of Limpopo said Kgamela Mohuba was placed on special leave in late-May and will remain on leave until the investigation is completed.

Scandal erupted around Kgamela Mohuba after reports to the university that Kgamela Mohuba allegedly hired two Zimbabweans to write his doctorate in commerce (DCom) thesis, and also allegedly paid for their flight tickets.

The University of Limpopo is also investigating how Kgamela Mohuba managed to complete the doctorate he was working on within 2 years.

Earlier this year Kgalema Mohuba went to court to halt the University of Limpopo's graduation ceremony after the University of Limpopo decided to no longer confer a doctorate degree on him, pending an internal investigation.

Judge Matsoro Semenya struck Kgalema Mohuba's case off the roll, ruling that Kgalema Mohuba "is not entitled to receive the degree" - a doctorate in commerce (DCom).

Judge Matsoro Semenya in his ruling said "It is evident that the applicant has not studied for a minimum period of two years for the doctor of commerce degree after enrolling in August 2016."

The scandal around Kgalema Mohuba is not the first time that someone on the SABC board is being mired in controversy around qualifications.

The disgraced former SABC chairperson and academic failure Ellen Tshabalala was exposed for her shocking lies about having tertiary qualifications from Unisa like a B.Com degree and in fact failed badly, and then had the audacity to blame Unisa for allegedly "losing" all records of her degrees after she was investigated by parliament for her lies.

Supreme Court of Appeal has dismissed Hlaudi Motsoeneng's leave to appeal 'SABC8' labour court case with costs; now Solidarity wants a warrant to have former SABC wrecking ball exec's assets seized.

South Africa's Supreme Court of Appeal has dismissed, with punitive costs, the famously matricless Hlaudi Motsoeneng's leave to appeal with the infamous former SABC wrecking ball that is now responsible in his personal capacity for having to pay all of the legal costs involved with the labour court case regarding the so-called "SABC8" journalists he wrongly fired and who the court ordered re-instated.

Solidarity brought the application in the labour court and in 2017 the court found that Hlaudi Motsoeneng should be held liable in his personal capacity for the legal costs associated with the court case.

"This is vindication that the SABC8 had been fired unlawfully and that Hlaudi Motsoeneng’s actions were unlawful and wrongful," says Solidarity in a statement.

According to Solidarity chief executive, dr Dirk Hermann, Solidarity would now proceed to serve and implement the warrant of execution granted to Solidarity with a view to have Hlaudi Motsoeneng's assets seized.

"In view of the fact that our demand for costs has been vindicated we would now also be in a position to demand recovery for more costs," says Dirk Hermann.

"What Hlaudi Motsoeneng has to realise now is that he cannot wear us out by carrying on with litigation but that, in the end, he will have to own up for the damage caused to so many. In his efforts to evade justice he has painted himself into a corner but has now exhausted all means at his disposal," says Dirk Hermann.