In 1998, the SABC began to broadcast two TV channels to the rest of Africa: SABC Africa, a news service, and Africa 2 Africa, an entertainment channel to the DStv platform. Few years down the line, the pair were merged only to be subsequently discontinued in 2008.
A year prior, SABC News International launched alongside a potential pay-tv operator e.Sat TV hoping to take on the likes of Telkom Media, On Digital Media and MultiChoice. Feeling that the market was big enough for two operators the plan was later abolished.
In 2008, it was announced that e.Sat TV would instead work as a channel supplier just like Siyaya TV with Moja Love to MultiChoice's DStv with the eNews Channel known to the current audience as eNCA.
In 2013, the SABC signed a R500 million deal with MultiChoice which would see the launch of the revised SABC News International which was shortened to SABC News accompanied by an entertainment channel, SABC Encore.
In 2017, e.tv's 4 channels at the time were exclusive to Openview with eExtra available on StarSat launched on DStv under eMedia Investments which saw a cut in carriage fees which went from R240 million with just eNCA to R140.8 million with the new additions.
Amidst the pandemic in 2020, you saw MultiChoice making cutbacks in an attempt to streamline which saw the discontinuation of SABC Encore which is rumoured to make a comeback later in 2022 the same time e.tv's 4 channels were reportedly going dark on the pay-tv platform.
In the pandemic, MultiChoice introduced some new methods such as the reduction of DStv Premiership to households carrying the Openview platform which tuned into a duplicate SABC 3 or Sport channel now it's seperate versions of the same channel.
Example: while Openview customers view Bafana Bafana on SABC 1 at 7pm DStv customers are watching DStv Premiership on the same channel.
MultiChoice has expressed on several occasions that they'd never aid SABC as it would be an extra expense to consumer's monthly subscription to DStv but seperate SABC channels says otherwise although the channel is blocked when you miss your payment and some of the content is added to DStv Catch-Up.
The SABC struggles to fill their end of the bargain with SuperSport so although no money is coming to them with DStv outside of SABC News and advertising. The chances of them getting discounted sports doesn't seem far fetched and the rate could have gone up with the feed separations.
e.tv was likely making money from their African feed known as eAfrica or eGhana and now eMedia Investments is taking the pay-tv platform to court regarding the carriage agreement for their 4 channels in South Africa.
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