The business agreement means that the SABC is officially entering the free-to-air satellite market, with SABC Sports Channel the first of the 3 additional SABC channels bring added to the Openview service.
SABC radio brands Ukhozi FM, Metro FM, Lesedi and Umhlobo Wenene are among the radio stations now also available on Openview, transmitted via digital broadcasting on a free-to-air basis.
Commenting on the new multi-year signal distribution and channel carriage agreement, eMedia Investments COO, Antonio Lee, says, "This is an exciting development for both the SABC and ourselves. The agreement ushers in a new level of collaboration between a private free-to-air satellite platform and public free-to-air broadcast services. There is no doubt it will boost the offering of Openview and will extend the SABC’s audience reach. We can now offer our Openview audience additional quality content and access to digital broadcast radio in the widest variety of languages possible in South Africa. We hope this is the start of a stronger and more fruitful relationship between Openview and the SABC".
SABC’s COO, Ian Plaatjes, adds, “This agreement enables the SABC to grow its channel offering and reach into the digital broadcasting space with three additional HD television channels. The first channel to be launched will be an SABC Sport Channel and will be distributed simultaneously across Openview, DTT, Telkom One and other streaming platforms. This collaboration will enable the SABC to optimally exploit its rich sport content rights and leverage the Openview reach to provide an improved integrated sport value proposition for our advertising clients across platforms. The agreement also enhances the distribution of SABC radio stations to create an increased value proposition for our radio advertising inventory. The other two TV channels, to be announced within the next 3 months, will leverage extensive SABC content and archived material.”
"The other two TV channels" "leverage extensive content and archived material" - SABC Education being the first with the other possibly being SABC Encore maybe it will launch under another new name perhaps or with an updated look. It would be shocking if it was SABC News.
Openview and the SABC believe that this agreement will expedite digital migration from analogue-only households to digital broadcasting platforms with more compelling free-to-air channels and content. Together with the DTT platform, Openview provides audiences with a free HD alternative to both analogue terrestrial and pay satellite options.
According to a source, this development was in talks with pay-tv platforms as well. SABC Education has been showing signs of launching and my guess was May which is the same time the channel launched.
Not long ago, even eMedia Investments entire set of channels were rumoured to be added onto DStv so far only 4 reside on that platform.
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