Insidus

eMedia Investments Leaked Streaming Service eVOD Has Launched To Replace On e On Demand And Also Plans To Add TV Channels

e.tv has launched the eMedia South African broadcaster's leaked streaming service eVOD (e-Video-On-Demand) as a so-called freemium streamer with over 2 500 hours of content at launch, including different premium subscription tiers for exclusive content.

e.tv plans to spend at least R100 million per year on creating brand-new local content for eVOD that will include 4 eOriginal series and 10 original South African feature films, and the plan is to add the streaming of live linear TV channels on eVOD in the future.

As e.tv is a free-to-air commercial broadcaster, eVOD offers thousands of hours of free library content that is available after a customer registers an eVOD profile.

eVOD also offers daily (R5 for 24 hours), weekly (R15) and monthly (R29.99) subscriptions, giving a viewer access to all content and offering more exclusive content including a first-run eOriginal movie, and access to the next week's 5 episodes of e.tv's top local prime soaps and telenovelas in a functionality called FastForward (FF).

eVOD subscribers can for instance watch the first episode of the new local drama series Is'phindiselo before broadcast, as well as Atlantis, the first eVOD Original movie in which a young woman sets out to find her missing brother involved in a gang and starring Bronte Snel, Maurice Carpede, Chumani Pan, Keenan Arrison and Ettienne Gertse.

eVOD customers can pay with debit or credit cards, airtime or partner billing with e.tv that has partnered with MTN and with MTN customers who register for eVOD who get 4GB data free monthly until 31 January 2022 that can only be used to watch eVOD content.

eVOD is available to download as an app for mobile devices on the Google Play and Apple's App Store, and is online at www.evod.co.za as a browser experience for computers.

e.tv's existing "e On Demand" website service where people could watch Catch Up episodes of shows, will now redirect users to the eVOD website.

eVOD launches in South Africa just a day before BritBox SA that is launching on 6 August with the country that is adding two new video streaming services in an already crowded video-on-demand space and where the South African public broadcaster plans to launch its own SABC VOD service, modelled on the BBC's Player, before the end of the year.

Besides eVOD and BritBox SA, South African consumers already have access to MultiChoice's Showmax, Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Apple TV+ that are all competing with PCCW Media's VIU, Vodacom Video Play and TelkomONE.

Consumers are still waiting for other global streamers like WarnerMedia's HBO Max, along with Disney+, Paramount+, NBCUniversal's Peacock and Discovery+ to launch locally.

"We decided to meet our audience in places where they will be at - so if not on the TV set, on the mobile, or on the PC, and eventually they will get the eVOD content again on TV," said Khalik Sherrif, eMedia Holdings CEO, the eVOD virtual launch event on Wednesday night.

"We have a huge following in South Africa through e.tv and all the other TV channels and we understand in our business that our customers and audiences are changing on a daily basis these days, getting content through means that we didn't conceive of 10 years ago - the TV has evolved from analogue to DTH to DTT and the last couple of years we went to OTT."

Multiple new eOriginal series, films planned
Marlon Davids, e.tv managing director said that "the investment in the local broadcasting industry will be R100 million per year - that's what our investment is going to be - and it will include at least 4 eOriginal series for eVOD, as well as at least 10 local movies per year".

"Atlantis is available to watch on eVOD and up until the end of March 2022 next year we will launch another 4 movies, and possibly 2 more. In a full financial year there will always be 10 movies that we will launch."

Excluding Atlantis that is already on eVOD, the other eOriginal films will be available on a T-VOD basis on eVOD as a transactional video-on-demand offering.

"This means that eVOD users will pay a to-be-determined once-off fee to watch a movie because it won't be available on TV or in cinemas and will be territory premieres," Marlon Davids said. The price for T-VOD films has not been decided yet.

"A big part of eVOD will be Catch Up, so users will be able to watch last night's episode of series like Durban Gen or House of Zwide or even the Turkish telenovelas dubbed into Afrikaans."

"In that space we know that viewers are obsessed with those shows like Gebroke Harte, so we will also offer FastForward for Elif to see the next 5 episodes that will still be broadcast on the eExtra channel."

"Also some of these Turkish drama series that haven't been on e.tv channels such as Dokter Ali and Voelvry will now premiere on eVOD even before it goes to one of our linear TV channels."

"After Is'phindiselo our 13-part series that has already been renewed for a second 13-episode season, we will launch another one towards mid-September called Housewives, that is in production."

Plan to move e.tv content to eVOD
e.tv told the media that its existing shows like soaps of which Catch Up rights have been licensed to MultiChoice's DStv Now will remain accessible on that pay-TV provider's streaming service but e.tv's content is no longer available on VIU and has been moved to eVOD.

"As our contractual obligations ride themselves out, we're consolidating our content on our OTT service which is the logical thing to do," Khalik Sherrif said.

"We are introducing what is the mass audience of South Africa to content that is now going to be streamed. As data becomes cheaper, the numbers will grow. But we had to be in this business. We had to start somewhere."

Due To Contractual Issues, Investigation Discovery, Real Time And Discovery Science Will No Longer Be Available On StarSat In South Africa And StarTimes In The Rest Of Africa

Apparently, StarTimes dumped the last batch of Discovery Channels seen on their platform: Real Time, Discovery Science and Investigation Discovery.

Before the removal, a lot of subscribers complained about experiencing technical difficulties with several channels including these ones and StarTimes said that they were working on resolving the matter.

Shocking enough, these channels went off air and according to StarTimes in the rest of Africa, Discovery decided to terminate these brands from August 2nd, funny thing about this is all of these channels are still available on DStv, Zuku TV and TelkomOne.

If you look brlob the one in South Africa was blandly honest:

Earlier this year, they even terminated Discovery Family and said it had something to do with Discovery but guess what it's still available on DStv and this is the channel's 8 month on the platform so if it's a Discovery thing why is it still functioning on your competitors.

Not long ago, MultiChoice even mentioned that they'd be handling the media sales for Discovery's set of channels packaged on DStv from September.

It seems to me that someone is being deceitful in this case StarTimes as they haven't been open with viewers regarding developments on their platform. The first incident happened in 2018/9 where they removed all the Disney Channels and blamed it on signal interference while Disney said it was due to commercial negotiations.

With this in mind, could it be possible that the company is facing some bigger problems that they don't want viewers to find out about.

Due To A Change In Management, MultiChoice Will No Longer Carry Beste Van Nederlands (BVN) On DStv

In view of a new digital strategy, the Flemish Minister of Media (Benjamin Dalle) has indicated that he does not wish to renew the partnership with BVN broadcaster after 1 July 2021. As a result, as from 1 July 2021, BVN will become a 100% Dutch broadcaster with more room for programmes of NPO, the Dutch public service broadcaster. BVN will continue to be available around the world online and largely via satellite. The termination of the partnership between Flanders and BVN will, however, partially affect the satellite distribution, as well as the VRT programme offering on BVN.

Satellite distribution via Eutelsat 113WA and Astra 19.2 continues:
BVN will still be available in the overseas territories belonging to the Kingdom of the Netherlands, but also elsewhere in Central and South America and a large part of the United States via the Eutelsat 113WA satellite. Furthermore, BVN will continue to be available via the Astra 19.2 satellite throughout Europe and the neighbouring territories in North Africa and South-West Asia. The “ reception page ” shows, by way of footprints, the exact areas where these satellites can be received.

Up till now, the high costs of satellite distribution could be shared with Flanders, but as the Flemish financial contribution, will be discontinued, we will, unfortunately, be forced to cut back on several expensive satellite contracts. Some of you may already experience the impact there of from 1 May 2021.

When choosing what satellites can be continued based on a smaller budget, we have ave decided, in consultation with the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science, to give priority to the overseas territories belonging to the Kingdom of the Netherlands. In addition, it has been opted to maintain satellite coverage in Europe, where most Dutch emigrants live.

The following satellites will stop transmitting BVN in the short term:
- SES-5 (in Central and Southern Africa) as from 1 May 2021
- AsiaSat 5 (in Asia) as from 1 July 2021
- Optus D2 (in Oceania) as from 1 July 2021
- Galaxy 19 (in Canada, United States and Central America) as from 1 July 2021
- Multichoice/DStv (in Southern Africa) as from 1 November 2021.

If you watch via the Galaxy 19 satellite, your location may offer BVN via the Eutelsat 113WA.

You can check the exact reception area of the Eutelsat in this footprint.

BVN via cable:
If you watch BVN via cable, and your cable provider receives the BVN signal through one of the satellites that are discontinued, your cable provider will most likely not be able to continue to transmit BVN.

BVN worldwide online:
The BVN TV channel is offered online around the world, free of charge. This means that you do not have to pay any subscription fees or to log in. You can find the BVN livestream at www.bvn.tv/bvnlive. Or download the free BVN app for Android and iOS.

VRT programmes on BVN until 1 July 2021:
The VRT programmes will continue to be part of the BVN programming until 1 July 2021. After that, Flemish citizens abroad can watch and listen to the VRT offering via VRT NU, VRT NWS, and the VRT radio apps. Flemish TV viewers within Europe who still wish to watch the VRT offering via satellite can take out a subscription from TV Vlaanderen.

Just as all Dutch-language viewers around the world, Flemish TV viewers can continue to watch the NPO programmes via the BVN website and app (free, no login or subscription required). We regret that the BVN service will be reduced. We realize that the internet quality is not sufficient everywhere in the world to be able to view BVN online, so that some of you may have no, or insufficient, access to BVN once the satellites are discontinued. We wish to express our thanks to those viewers for their loyalty.

StarPlus, Star Gold And Star Life Might Be Rebranding Soon

Earlier this year, Star India replaced the Star branding across UK/Europe with Utsav leaving Vijay TV as the only brand in South Africa, Middle East and Singapore to use the Vijay design to avoid clashing with the Star branding that's been rolling out internationally through Disney+.

According to Senior Vice President and Business Head, they want to celebrate positivity and energy reinforced through our loved characters. The Utsav logo, infused from the Star logo, signifies stability and progress while the trademark swoosh pays homage to the insurmountable human spirit.

Since Utsav was introduced, several queries have been filed regarding the rest of the Star channels in Africa and each time they've always redirected the media to the UK/European market since the changes were only applicable to them.

After much anticipation, it seems as if Star India got the rights to use the Utsav branding for the rest of their channels in Africa as they've seemingly been tested through Intelsat 20 on both DStv and StarSat.

On an interesting note, Star Life is the only channel that hasn't gotten the Utsav branding so I'm guessing the change will come to affect near September since it is the channel's birth month - perhaps the channel will be called Utsav Life or use an alternative name Life OK and add the triangle star-infused logo.

Speaking of Star, FOX has been adding a ton of content from there and their upfront in May was very weak in regards to new content so I'm guessing that the rebrand will happen will happen in October which coincides with the closure of more Disney Channels in Asia, Germany, Australia and New Zealand.

New Series Alert: The Goldbergs Coming Soon To e.tv

Your weekends are about to get even more sillier as e.tv introduces a brand new sitcom which is known other than ABC's hit show, The Goldbergs which can be seen on M-Net and VUZU.

The Goldbergs, follows the life of three siblings that navigate what it means to grow up in the colorful, loving Goldberg family in the 1980s. The show is loosely based on the showrunner's childhood, during which he regularly videotaped events.

The series was created by Adam F. Goldberg and stars Wendi McLendon-Covey, Jeff Garlin, Sean Giambrone, Troy Gentile, Hayley Orrantia and George Segal.

Season 1 of The Goldbergs is set to air on Sundays at 19:30 replacing Modern Family. The date will be announced by the channel.