Recap To The Week: DStv Could Be Losing More Channels As Skydance Has Been Given The Greenlight To Acquire Paramount Global

Not long ago, the Federal Communication Commission gave Skydance the greenlight to acquire Paramount Global, the owners of MTV and CBS. Prior to this, Paramount Global was looking to shed costs by shuttering parts of its operations in Europe and Africa.

Paramount Global is looking to close various MTV channels by 31 December 2024 in Europe which include MTV Music, MTV 80s, MTV 90s and Club MTV. In Africa, they're looking to scale back on local operations hinting at the potential demises of BET and MTV Base.

This article is here to elaborate on various things regarding Paramount Africa. Aside from BET and MTV Base, even Nicktoons, MTV and Nick Jr in Ethiopia had all been localised over the years and this is to sum up what is likely to happen.

As reported, BET and MTV Base might be going away soon and with the Skydance transaction underway I'd give before the end of 2025 to mid 2026. BET is launching a new drama next month titled Black Gold unless that gets scrapped or shipped to another outlet.

My point here is that these channels curated a lot of content within the region particularly MTV Base. With this area closed, BET will look a lot like Comedy Central (redundant) and had been that way until these local stuff made its way to the channel giving it relevance.

MTV Base won't survive when Paramount Global shutters it's operations in Africa as its become another Trace Africa. They can't just follow their sister network MTV's weekday morning schedule and offer international hits from Coldplay and Taylor Swift as they'd risk losing it's viewers in Lagos.

It wouldn't shock me if MTV Base were to close on 31 December 2024 alongside it's European natives. Maybe BET will tag along and MultiChoice would presumably replace it with another TV channel or risk losing more consumers.

As for MTV, I recall that Paramount Global has a unified feed for the channel in Europe known as MTV Global presuming that's what is to become of MTV Africa as opposed to a complete shutdown.

Nick Jr. in Ethiopia is a much stronger candidate to get shut down following Canal+'s exist in the region. Because while Nicktoons has it for only 4 hours in day this is a whole channel or to corporate wasteful spending. There's plenty of countries that dub but Ethiopia lacks the scale to sustain the channel.

Nicktoons very much like Ethiopia has been dubbing in other parts of Africa through the block Nick In Your Language presuming that's going away as well. Of course, there are a handful of companies dubbing shows independently so it wouldn't be a loss if Nick In Your Language were to fade away.

Same goes for NickMusic which was produced under the same unit as MTV Base.