Aletta Alberts: It's not the one or the other, it's more a hybrid. There will always be linear channels because there is content that people want to see live, and things that we see that people still prefer to watch on a linear channel more so than on-demand.
People show much more tolerance for shorter, "event-like" series on-demand because the experience is like binge-watching, compared to say sitting through a 22-episode anything, unless you're very committed or you watch it in intervals.
Yes, the world has changed but the channels is still very, very strong and on a daily basis, we still get pitched hundreds of new TV channels every week. But the world is shifting in the sense that there are other genres coming to the foreground.
Also, as the base of viewers grows, the mix of the base is changing, so you are looking for different content. So we know that the top-end for instance in South Africa where it's not a homogenous market here and they've got a lot of access to Wifi, they're more moving towards streaming services and over-the-top services and watching content that is maybe slightly more discerning or niche genres that are more about personal taste than watching things in groups.
Then when you get to the middle market and lower, those viewers still want to see content that they can watch together and they also don't have hours and hours and gigabytes of data to view with.
Having said that, there are still genres that people want to watch live. People want to watch reality TV live because if they don't watch it live, they can't take part in the social conversation. You don't, for instance, want to watch MasterChef on OTT or something like Our Perfect Wedding or My Kitchen Rules or those types of shows because everybody wants to comment on the dress or what people are doing wrong. People do still want to watch that live because of social media. I think the reason why we are taking channels off-we're taking content off that we believe can go sit on OTT because audiences are so small now on those channels that it doesn't warrant it to have actual linear channels anymore; and only look at those channels that are really mass-market channels over time, as the base keeps on changing.
In Africa, the channels business is still very, very, very big and will be for the foreseeable future. I don't think that's something that's going to change overnight.
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