News Shorts: Disney Junior Looking To Rebrand Simply To Disney Jr. Along With Series Premiere, WildEarth's Live Safaris Relaunch On People's Weather And StarTimes Debuts New Swahili Dubbed Telenovela Channel ST Swahili Plus

DJR is no more

Earlier in the year, Disney filed a new trademark for Disney Junior known simply as DJR. This had garnered poor reception from long time fans of the channel with some questioning Disney's loyalty for the brand as the trademark seemed dull and unimaginative.

During the month, Disney unveiled a trailer for the upcoming animated series The Little Mermaid based on the live-action of the same name. This was accompanied from what looks to be revised logo of DJR now Disney Jr. following Nick Jr. with ending their last name as initials.

If one has to guess Disney was probably taking to account consumer's feedback and altered the trademark to something more simple and familiar, Disney Jr. The new logo is anticipated to coincide and form part of a marketing campaign to promote The Little Mermaid. 

WildEarth on Openview 

Last month, MultiChoice at the request of WildEarth yanked the channel from DStv consumers in Africa. This formed part of a bigger conspiracy within MultiChoice as 10 other channels had exited including Me, Ginx TV, B4U Movies and NWTV. 

Since December, WildEarth had been supplying People's Weather their live safaris extending their reach to Openview. This was quietly yanked off from the lineup sometime ago with WildEarth reporting its reinstatement on People's Weather from 1st June. 

As some readers are aware, WildEarth had been undergoing a restructure and trying to build its content slate so that and possible distribution fees contributed to its disappearances from the channel with WildEarth now on 3 to 5 days a week.

Sunrise airs Wednesdays to Sundays at 06:30, On Safari and Sunset airs Fridays to Sundays from 14:30.

More telenovelas on StarTimes 

After eMedia Investments and MultiChoice had invested in locally dubbed programming which had spawned their own TV channels, ePleiser and Zee Zonke. StarTimes is hopping on the bandwagon with a Swahili dubbed telenovela channel, ST Swahili Plus. 

ST Swahili Plus is set to go live in East Africa on channel 162 and 432 on the Classic and Super packages. Programs set to join the lineup include Chandra Nandani, The First Nanny and The Iron Heart.

Paramount And Amazon Reportedly Enter Talks For New Streaming Bundle

Recently Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery announced a deal that would see Max, Hulu, and Disney+ bundle. After that Comcast announced a bundle of Peacock, Netflix, and Apple TV+. Now Bloomberg is reporting that Amazon and Paramount are in talks about a possible streaming bundle.

According to the report, Paramount and Amazon are in early talks to offer a bundled version of their streaming service. Paramount already owns multiple streaming services, including Paramount+ and BET+. They could be bundled on their own through Amazon channels or possibly bundled with Amazon’s own streaming services like Amazon Prime Video or MGM+.

The talks are not a done deal, and Bloomberg says it is possible nothing may come from them. Paramount has also reportedly been in talks with Peacock about a bundle option, but no deal has been reached at this time.

Bundles have widely been seen as a quick way for services to gain subscribers. They are also seen as a way to lock in subscribers for longer. Increasingly streaming services are fighting a growing trend of cord cutters rotating streaming services in 2024. This impacts profit, and customers binge everything they want in a month or two instead of keeping a subscription long term. Bundles could tempt customers to be locked in for longer by offering more content.

British Streaming Service BritBox Will Be Shutting Down In South Africa After 3 Years By The End Of August

Launched in South Africa by August 2021, BritBox was a joint venture between British broadcasters BBC Studios and ITV which was home to content accessible on BBC Brit, BBC Lifestyle, BBC Earth, CBeebies and BBC UKTV all of which were accessible on MultiChoice's DStv. 

South Africa was the only African region to offer BritBox and one of eight countries across the world. It is also the second region looking to not close its operations following the UK by the end of April as operations were merged with ITV's existing offering. 

BBC Studios had acquired global rights to the remaining shares of BritBox International. Under this agreement would continue to offer content from ITV with the deal described as a "tremendous opportunity to grow its services and take it to new heights".

Unlike the UK, BritBox will not be replaced with another streaming service and if anything further content is likely to resurface on MultiChoice's Showmax and Netflix. As BBC Studios despite serving as a rival broadcaster continued licensing content to other platforms. 

The news of its demise comes after Acorn TV had closed its doors in the market by the end of 2022. Since then, BBC Studios was the only broadcaster to offer the best in British entertainment now consumers have until the end of August to use their services.

Statement from BritBox about its closure in South Africa 

BritBox has made the difficult decision to discontinue its service in South Africa to align with the brand's strategic priorities. This decision follows careful consideration of market dynamics and business objectives. We sincerely appreciate your past support on behalf of our entire team.

It will cease operations in South Africa by Friday, August 30, 2024. 

Development Alert (Rumour): Star Life Reinstates Daytime Repeats Of Evil Affairs And Beyond Love, Moves Rebroadcasts Of My Identity, Game Of Love And The Evil Eye To Late Nights

During the week, it was reported that Star Life would be adding repeat slots to their late night shows, Beyond Love and Evil Affairs. After one of the two were embroiled in ongoing complaints from viewers about the visuals and themes in the shows.

The idea was to keep the uncensored entertainment in the night which was met with backlash from various viewers. As some could only catchup with daytime repeats and the decision to remove these shows only led to a decline in viewers.

Star Life opted to give these shows additional slots in the night but the times were so horrendous. Viewership for any TV channel is usually much lower in the timeslots of Evil Affairs and Beyond Love but the channel opted to worsen it by repeating them by 1am.

Viewers were once again outraged by the decision and took to Facebook and Instagram to post their displeasure with the channel.

Now it looks like Star Life will backing off in restricting these shows as an updated programme guide for next month sees Evil Affairs and Beyond Love getting their daytime slots back. So the question will there be censorship we'll have to wait and see.

But that's not the only change the channel could be making by next month. There's still no official word on any of these developments but from what we can see rebroadcasts of Game Of Love, My Identity and The Evil Eye move to the 3am to 5am timeslot. 

Similar to Evil Affairs and Beyond Love, these shows will no longer have repeats outside of these timeslots. As mentioned while Beyond Love and Evil Affairs get their timeslots back, Jhanak and String Of Love replace The Evil Eye at 11pm with Anupama at 5pm.

On the upside, viewers get Beyond Love and Evil Affairs daytime repeats and on the other any chance to relive nostalgic moments had gone down the drain. 

Development Alert: Nicktoons Global (Including Africa) Might Be Debuting Splat Rebrand Soon

Earlier in the month, Nicktoons got the Splat rebrand in the UK after it failed to do so in Africa earlier in the year. Amidst the rebrand in the UK, there were rumours that remaining feeds of the channel would also adopt this new logo within the month.

Surprise, several viewers had spotted the soon-to-be launched logo for Nicktoons between shows. As pictured above, the logo is now in the top right corner as seen with sister channels Nickelodeon and Nick Jr. and from the looks of the graphics these designs are likely from European feeds.

As some readers are aware, most of Paramount’s channels particularly in Europe had been globalized with some brands like BET and MTV Base still seen with local variations. 

Nicktoons' African feed was part of this latter but may not be the case entirely. Sometime in 2023, the channel's older kids lineup matched of Germany, Turkey, Arabia and Asia so it didn't seem that much coincidental that we'd rebrand altogether. 

Several rumours point toward the channel rebranding later in the following week. I mean considering the UK had rebranded much earlier you'd presume other feeds would follow within a 3 month timeframe if not sooner.