News Shorts: SuperSport Motorsport Opens Up To DStv Compact And Compact Plus Customers In Time For The F1 Season, Undercover Billionaire Returns On Discovery Family For Season 2 And PBS Kids Loads Up On Civics And Media Literacy With New Shorts

Undercover Billionaire returns for season 2

With just $100 in their pockets, three business titans are dropped in unfamiliar cities, stripped of their names, money and contacts and given a simple challenge: Build a $1 million business in just 90 days.

First TX: 13 March 

TX Day: Weekdays 

TX Time: 19:40

SuperSport Motorsport opening up to more DStv customers

The 2024 Formula 1 season will be the longest campaign on record with 24 races and six Sprint events from March 2nd to December 8th. There were 24 races planned for 2023, but the cancellation of the Chinese GP due to COVID-travel restrictions and Emilia Romagna due to floods reduced the number to 22.

MultiChoice will be making the F1 on SuperSport Motorsport accessible to DStv Compact+ and Compact from 28 February to 11 March.

PBS KIDS enters the classroom

PBS KIDS has commissioned a collection of themed content touching on civics and media literacy in order to address a learning gap that isn’t being well-served by the US school system.

On the greenlit list is Sesame Workshop’s new series of 20 Together We Can music videos for four-to-eight-year-olds, exploring topics such as rights, voting and what it means to be part of a community. 

PBS KIDS is also reupping its civics-focused City Island series of three-minute shorts for a second season, plus working on a City Island Sings spinoff (10 music videos). The next batch of 20 City Island episodes will tackle media literacy topics like news, advertising and fact-based reporting for six to 10s in an expanded 2D-animated story world.

Why MultiChoice Has Been Removing A Lot Of Local/African Channels On DStv And GOtv In Recent Months?

2023 had been proven to be one of the most challenging years for consumers and businesses. On top of less channel additions, MultiChoice had experienced zero growth in DStv consumption in the top tier market part of which has to do with the impact of load shedding.

But one thing that caught several readers attention was and appears to be an ongoing matter with the company is the reduction of TV channels. Some memorable TV channels included M-Net Edge, Animal Planet and Disney XD.

As seen in 2023, MultiChoice has been slowly reducing its local footprint with the closure of Maisha Magic Movies, HONEY and ROK3. This pandemic had carried itself over to the new year with NWTV and People's Weather with 1Magic on hold for the time being.

This has led to some ongoing fear from consumers of The Home Channel and various other brands with some threatening to cancel if they lose out on Gardening 101 and Real Health.

Similar to secondary networks like M-Net City and VUZU, MultiChoice is probably streamlining it's local endeavours in a major shakeup. Warner Bros. Discovery halted production of original content for TNT and TBS as the latter is folded under HBO and the Max streamer.

Throughout 2023, this was what was kind of analysed Maisha Magic Movies reverted to Maisha Magic and Pearl Magic while HONEY's remaining offering merged onto Showmax. Downside to cable, regional restrictions as this content is less accessible now.

Looking at this, its likely MultiChoice is prioritising existing IPs like Mzansi Magic and stripping off loss makers/non-performing brands like 1Magic. This doesn't mean there won't be any local investment as Zee Zonke and Play Room launched with a minimal line-up.

Channel Closure: People's Weather Will Stop Airing On DStv By Early March, Remains On Openview For The Time Being

People's Weather is Africa's first and only environmental and wildlife channel since 2007. After launching as a weather service, MultiChoice would move it away from the news section of the DStv package and group it alongside Curiosity Channel, BBC Earth and National Geographic.

The channel would extend its reach to free-to-view consumers by 2015 with eMedia Investments' Openview platform. 

As seen on the programme guide, the channel is scheduled for deletion on the DStv platform by the 1st of March. Although, the channel would remain on the Openview platform the decline in linear consumption will likely lead to content cuts and revenue loss.

People's Weather had hit a repetitive slope rehashing old content as it tries to build its primetime offering. Last year, The Denver Naicker Talk Show was revived on the network following Glow TV's exit from linear TV and since December content from WildEarth had formed part of its line-up.

 

According to MultiChoice, the decision to terminate People's Weather was to find new and innovative ways to work together. What that could imply is select shows from People's Weather will probably resurface on other TV channels.

This would be the fifth channel to have exited DStv in the year with B4U Movies also scheduled for deletion in March. Other channels to have exited DStv so far include the controversial Emmanuel TV by TB Joshua alongside community channels One Freestate Televisual and NWTV.

Development Alert: Paramount+ And Peacock Are Reportedly In Discussion For A Potential Merger

Paramount+ and Peacock have reportedly started talks to merge into a single streaming according to a report from The Wall Street Journal.

According to that report, Comcast and Paramount recently met to look at options to possibly merge their streaming services into a single streaming service, among other options. This would bring Paramount’s and NBCUniversal’s content under a single streaming app.

Details are still thin. No pricing, naming, or other details have been decided at this time. At this time, neither company has made any formal announcement about the talks.

Paramount+ had 63 million subscribers at the end of the 3rd quarter of 2023. Peacock recently announced that it hit 31 million subscribers paying for the service. Some subscribers pay for both but merging together will help the services compete with larger services like Max and Disney+.

Both services are still struggling to turn a profit. Paramount+ is expected to become profitable by the end of 2025. No timeline is known for when Peacock will become profitable. Merging the services could also help them reach profitability sooner.

SABC Cancels Fokus And Shifts Afrikaans Programming Such As Voetspore And 50/50 From SABC 2 To SABC 3

Last year, it was reported that the SABC would be axing the Afrikaans soap 7de Laan after its 23 year run for repeats of Vetkoekpaleis. The public broadcaster had been struggling to acquire new content and update their brands due to financial constraints.

Since then, they have been cutting back on programming for their viewers with uBettina Wethu that was revived on e.tv for season 4. Then there's sort of rumours going around that Takalani Sesame had also been a subject for cancellation with rebroadcasts on e.tv.

Now it has been reported that Fokus, one of the last few Afrikaans shows to have aired on SABC 2 had been cancelled by the network. Not only that they're looking to transition SABC 3 into a multilingual channel by March 2024 with the addition of news, 50/50 and Voetspore.

Caroline Phalakatshela, SABC TV publicist, confirmed to Netwerk24 that the SABC has cancelled Fokus since it "no longer fits in" with SABC2 and the broadcaster's plan to move Afrikaans shows to SABC3 from March as part of a strategic decision.

When you look at it, I can kind of see where SABC was getting by moving Afrikaans to SABC 3. This portion of the channel had been ousted in favour of eExtra's Kuiertyd and kykNET so aligning it with SABC 3 is probably one way to help alleviate the viewership.

SABC has been trying to cater for all indigenous languages and for several years had burdened SABC 2 with 7 languages (including English) while SABC 3 would just cater to one with SABC 1 offering 2 languages.

SABC 3 similar with M-Net hasn't been dominant with the current demographic of SABC 1 and Mzansi Magic. While Uzalo is able to pull around 5 million viewers, Vetkoekpaleis was only able to obtain below 700,000 viewers which is almost half of SABC 3's current audience.

In general, most of the content like Noot Vir Noot and as mentioned Fokus had been pulling similar figures to SABC 3. The channel with a smaller number of viewers has a long journey ahead to try and retain the remaining viewers of Vetkoekpaleis and 50/50.