During the year, the public broadcaster promised to unveil the highly anticipated news brand, SABC eKhaya. A spinoff to the current SABC News channel seen on MultiChoice's DStv, the channel would be broadcast in all 11 South African languages was slated for April 2023.
We were told by sources that the channel had a soft launch so to better understand this we turn to SABC Sport. The channel was active almost a year or so before it was added to the Openview platform and TelkomOne (now SABC+) and similar to SABC Sport it's not available on SABC+.
If we had to guess, the public broadcaster is probably looking to get the channel on MultiChoice's DStv or eMedia Investments' Openview. We assume they want to give this channel as much exposure as seen with SABC Sport which became the top 10 channels on Openview.
Not much marketing was put into SABC Sport but the channel managed to defy all odds and the same outcome could be expected for SABC eKhaya should it not exclusively to DTT and streaming.
From what we understand they want to make it a leading brand similar to SABC News or it's initial offering at the time, SABC Parliament. For now, the channel will serve as a catch-up to the current offering seen on SABC 1-3 and overtime they could fiddle around with the repeats.
It's currently unknown whether the public broadcaster plans to market SABC eKhaya or similar to SABC Sport wait until they can get more platforms onto the concept.
“The Queen’s producers, Ferguson Films, will shoot Season 7 of the show, which will premiere in July 2022 and viewers will continue to enjoy the telenovela on their screens until its final episode airs on 13 January 2023,”.
“The 1Magic telenovela Lingashoni, produced by Stained Glass TV, will come to an end after its second season concludes on 16 March 2023. This follows the season’s premiere on 21 March 2022.”
A new telenovela will plug the gap on the weekday 9pm slot, replacing The Queen from January 2023. The new content, which is under development, will be announced in due course.
Meanwhile The River, a multi-award winning production, has been renewed for Season 5.
“Our replacement for Lingashoni will be announced in due course. The business has reviewed our approach to focus on stabilising the channel slate with limited high-end series and realities.”
Potential lineup changes coming to the SABC channels
As reported in the past week, the public broadcaster has pushed the launch for its new channels and OTT service to the next financial year which will end by March 2023.
These new channels are said to be made available on the untitled OTT service as predicted and plans are underway to redevelop the offering across all their television channels and radio stations ahead of the launch.
The public broadcaster wants to have a multi-OTT presence and just like Discovery Inc's Discovery+ they're not setting out to surpass Netflix or Showmax but to be sustainable for the years to come.
As mentioned a couple of times, the rumoured SABC Encore could be different to the one formerly seen on DStv and this info kind of proves my suspicions were pretty accurate.
PBS Kids which was available to DStv Premium, Compact+, Compact, Family and Access package will also be available on Easyview when eToonz goes off air from April meaning viewers get hours of Arthur, Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood, Wild Kratts and more.
JimJam is also available on channel 310 and kids can look forward to the following titles in April:
• The Triplets S1
• Roary the Racing Car (new episodes)
In 2018, SABC had announced plans to launch a streaming service and since then it's been delayed likely due to their contract agreement with the Asian streaming service, VIU which bundles several shows from eMedia Investments such as Scandal and Imbewu.
Perhaps it will be called: SABC VOD, SABC Streaming, SABC On Demand, SABC iPlayer or SABC Plus/SABC+.
According to Madoda Mxakwe on CxO Series, the public broadcaster is expected to launch some HD channels likely the two long awaited channels on Openview one of which were rumoured to be SABC Encore while upgrading SABC Education to HD in the next financial year accompanied by an OTT service.
The public broadcaster stated in some documents that the streaming service will be available before the end of current financial year which is March 31st, 2022 and is anyone surprised that they've never reached the deadline.
For almost a year, Openview consumers have been waiting on the two channels promised to them by both eMedia Investments and the SABC in mid 2021. Since then several names pop-up part of which were part of their DTT plans and still need to be addressed: SABC Encore (as mentioned), SABC Parliament and SABC Children.
The future of eNCA and e.tv News
Every year, eMedia Investments and MultiChoice enter negotiations regarding the carriage agreement of eNCA alongside several other channels packaged by the eBrand.
For several years, eMedia Investments had expressed their frustration with MultiChoice as other brands such as Newsroom Afrika and SABC News make more money than them despite having the most watched news channel on their platform.
News And Sport is set to go off air by the end of March on Openview and the retrenchments following onto eMedia Investments kind of lead to the question over the fate of e.tv News segments.
The NewsLink Block on eNCA is changing headquarters which was held in the same spot as e.tv News is moving to the spot renovated by eNCA on DStv with new anchors.
eNCA launching on Openview to some extent???
Regarding the upcoming agreement, is it possible that e.tv News and eNCA will be unified under one brand just like SABC News segments on SABC 1-3 with the linear channel on DStv.
SABC News is available on SABC's DTT but the likely reason is the limitations as the public broadcaster isn't selling them like hot cakes but putting up a fence requiring households with an income of less than R3200 to obtain them at their nearest post office.
Adding eNCA onto Openview was seen as a get out of jail free card for DStv customers who are fed up with the yearly increases and never ending repeats and MultiChoice didn't want any of that but how about a portion of the brand?
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