Prior to these Discovery channels demise, Warner Bros. Discovery had quietly removed any mentions of "Brand New" from their promos with Discovery Family and Real Time both of which are residing on Zuku and MultiChoice's DStv across Africa had undergone a similar route.
Unlike Discovery Science, Discovery Family and Real Time continue to update their offering. I would be lying if I didn't say Warner had made changes to the channel that would question their very existence.
Few years back, Warner would licence content exclusively for these channels particularly The Carbonaro Effect and The Marilyn Denis Show but now both channels exist to rehash content from Discovery Channel, Food Network, TLC, Investigation Discovery and HGTV.
On top of that, there's no marketing going towards these brands particularly content viewed on them. Considering these channels are a priority to both Warner and the viewers, you'd expect consistency. Although the latter is just repeats they are consumers actually viewing the content.
Some of these viewers may get attached to some of the content and would want to keep tabs. Warner's failure to just promote these shows would further distance viewers from the channel or better yet affect the performance as mentioning these shows would keep viewers onboard.
As to whether Real Time and Discovery Family could be going dark in the region as seen with Disney's offering in Asia and Warner's offering in Europe - that's kind of quo.
After what happened to Boomerang, Warner may look at ways of trying to keep the content intact without negatively impacting the viewers. Perhaps a merger/rebranding of the channels is what awaits for them in future or if a closure is inevitable perhaps a substitute like Discovery Channel and TLC.
In all honesty, Real Time looks more lively and upbeat than Discovery Family (with its large chunk of Discovery Channel) as it inherits content from Food Network, HGTV and Investigation Discovery with very little investment coming from TLC and Animal Planet.
