Three years ago, South African viewers were introduced to VIU a brand new streaming service and also PCCW's second attempt at in the streaming game following the termination of OnTapTV.
For those who weren't present at the time, the brand failed to give the media specific details on the content viewed on the platform but ramped up partnerships with eMedia Investments and the SABC for some of its content part of which led to its relevancy.
Last year, the brand got into a brawl with eMedia Investments regarding the agreement for various local productions seen on e.tv such as Scandal and Imbewu as eMedia failed to hold their end of the bargain.
According to VIU at the time, consumers were alarmed to see that the content wasn't available on the platform as the e.tv productions had a following for which impacted their subscriber base with the brand set to lose the content to eVOD by 2024.
During the month, SABC viewers were alarmed to see that the public broadcaster recently launched SABC+ is missing several ties as their packaged exclusively by VIU with consumers having to wait until a certain timeframe to get access to the remaining content.
VIU was a bridge between both these parties and as seen now both of them now offer their own OTT platforms which puts the streamer in the very precarious position as most of the consumer base are big fans of the local providers.
Sure, VIU has a lot to offer outside these two with various content from BBC Studios alongside Crime + Investigation from A+E Networks. But is that enough to guarantee success for the platform I honestly doubt it.
South Africa had a various streamers such as A+E Networks' Acorn TV, Cell C's Black, Vodacom's Red and Telkom's TelkomOne streaming service all of which had a similar trait to VIU which includes bundling a lot of third party content and less to no original content - all of which have been dusted.
Now questions amount to how the future of the streamer as they keep sourcing out more and more content kind of like how abovementioned did before closing down.
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