Three years ago a friend of mine who works for Multichoice’s DSTV division phoned and asked me why I was not a DSTV subscriber. I simply told her that I did not have much time for DSTV, that I was busy with interviews, and writing hundreds of articles for my then-employer. Watching perpetual television was not in my schedule at the time. The other reason was that I didn’t see much in the offering to suit my viewing tastes. Later on I reversed my decision, realising that the people I lived with could enjoy some of the entertainment offered by some of the DSTV channels, very few of which I knew anyway. With time I’ve also been able to enjoy some of the offerings on DSTV, channels like The History Channel, ESPN, MM1 and MM2, Discovery, Disney and others, rank highly on my to-do-list. I love the fact that I can watch sports like Formula One live on SuperSport.About two months ago I wrote an email to the head of DSTV programming enquiring about something. The gist of my query related to an apparent lack of my type of programming on DSTV. One of my favourite channels on the satellite service channel is Series, which, as many of you know, plays series like dramas and soapies. Old and new, you’ll find “classics” like Baywatch alongside The A-Team, Melrose Place, Knight Rider, Home Improvement, Seinfeld and Everybody Loves Raymond. I explained to the DSTV lady that as much as I enjoy some of these, I didn’t feel complete as an African in Africa, without reruns of programmes like Martin, Sanford and Son, The Jeffersons, Good Times, The Wayans Brothers, Living Single…it was a long list. I get the Grammys and the Oscars, but I don’t get the Soul Trains and the NAACP Image Awards or the BET Hip Hop Awards. While other “cultures” are represented with several DMX music channels, I can’t find any kwaito channel on DMX, any gospel, especially African gospel, and there is no 90s R&B on there!
Guess what? Two months later, and counting, I still have not received ANY form of reply whatsoever from this powerful person at DSTV. This after paying a stipend of over R500 to these folks in Randburg, north of Jozi. Apart from being peeved right inside my nostril hairs at being ignored, I realised then that DSTV is not here for me. It’s just here for DSTV and a few other people who don’t necessarily like the same things as I do.
So when ICASA announced that four satellite broadcasting licenses had been issued to Telkom Media, On Digital Media (ODM), e.tv's sister firm, E-Sat, and Walking on Water (a company devoted to pro-Christian programming), I jumped for joy. It felt like the day Cell C and Virgin Mobile came along, or the dream I had of an announcement that Telkom was about to get three more players in its fields. All these new companies have promised a combined total of over 100 channels between all of them. Fantastic news. ODM even says they’ll adopt a pay-as-you-watch system where you only pay for the channels you actually watch. More wonderful news. And none of them will charge over R350 per month! Amazing!
Come 2008 around about this time all these new players would have launched their menus to us all. Maybe by that day I would have had a response from this big honcho at DSTV. Or maybe I would have switched suppliers and gone for one of the new players, by which event her response will be totally meaningless to me.
1 comment:
Well... As I write this, 2008 is all but finished... and still DSTV is the sole provider in SA. They offer perhaps 10 channels that I'm interested in, but in order to view even one of them I need to shell out 400-something Rand a month (on top of my regular TV license) for their "Premium" offering which is full of stuff that I don't want... and even the channels that I do want are currently still showing the same re-runs that we've seen for more than two years now, over and over and over again.
I've been house sitting for someone who has DSTV, and it didn't take me all that long to figure out that the one or two movies I might consider worth watching during that period were either on SABC3 or eTV. Go figure.
DSTV - so much less.
Post a Comment