Icasa has another go at cracking open TV
TWO weeks ago, Icasa provisionally awarded licences to five new subscription television broadcasters. The communications authority hopes the move will crack open a highly concentrated market thoroughly dominated by one operator, MultiChoice.
The communications regulator will be hoping that it is more successful in this latest round of licensing. Of four new pay-TV licences awarded in a similar process about seven years ago, only one — TopTV (now StarSat) owned by On Digital Media — actually launched a commercial service. And it barely survived: it’s now in a business rescue process.
The other successful licensees simply withdrew from the market. The e.tv sister company, eSat, beat a tactical retreat, deciding that the market — with four new players — would be too competitive, electing instead to launch a 24-hour news channel in a sweet deal with MultiChoice.
Another player, Walking on Water Television, which was meant as a Christian-based service focused on family values, went quiet — presumably because it was unable to raise the capital it needed.
Telkom was quite the opposite with
Consumer choice in television is about to expand enormously
Telkom Media, a harebrained scheme to take on MultiChoice head-on in a business it barely understood. After pumping hundreds of millions of rands into the ill-fated venture, Telkom pulled the plug.
Fast-forward to 2014 and Icasa is back for another go.
This time around, things are a little different though. In 2008, the prospective licensees all planned to offer satellite-based pay-TV services (with Telkom Media also working on delivering programming over its fixed broadband network). The latest batch of licensees intend using digital terrestrial TV (broadcasts from groundbased towers rather than satellites) as their preferred platform.
South Africa’s migration from analogue to digital terrestrial TV has been held up for years, most recently by the damaging fight between MultiChoice and e.tv over the arcane issue of set-top box control. But when digital broadcasts are eventually switched on commercially — and hopefully this will happen quickly now that the election is over — it will open the way for new broadcasters.
Icasa, perhaps wary of repeating history, has asked the five new op- erators to furnish a range of additional information before making the licences permanent. Importantly, it wants most of the provisional licensees to submit proof, in the form of written guarantees, that they have the necessary funding.
The five are a mixed bag. None, however, intends taking on MultiChoice at the top end of the market. Instead, they’re targeting audiences in lower living standards measures.
There’s Kagiso TV, part of Kagiso Media (it owns Jacaranda, East Coast Radio, Howzit MSN and other media assets), which intends offering a service with a high level of content to lower-and middle-income households with packages that cost less than R240 a month.
Another potentially strong candidate is Siyaya, a media consortium whose main shareholder is the Bakgatla Ba Kgafela community in North West. It wants to offer local content with a strong focus on football for a fee starting at R70 a month.
More specialised are CloseTV, which hopes to target South Africa’s gay, lesbian and transgender communities, and Mobile TV, which, as its name suggests, wants to offer digital TV broadcasts to mobile devices using Korean technology called digital multimedia broadcasting, as well as radio broadcasts using a digital rival to FM transmission.
The fifth licensee is Mindset Media Enterprises, which produces educational material. It must still submit a detailed business plan to Icasa, which is concerned about its sustainability, particularly its plan to offer access to its content for only R1 a month.
The new entrants, if they come to market, will find the going tough. MultiChoice, which now offers channel bouquets that suit a greater range of pockets, also intends offering subscription-based terrestrial bouquets. And e.tv and the SABC intend offering many more free-to-air channels on the new digital platform.
Consumer choice in television is about to expand enormously. The five new prospective broadcasters will have to work damn hard if they hope to make it.
McLeod edits TechCentral.co.za. Find him on Twitter @mcleodd