Robert Kirby
CHANNELVISION
With the advent of satellite television, those with the wherewithal to buy and have installed dishes, decoders and all the rest of it are offered what seems at first to be a plethora of wonderful entertainment and information. It’s a far cry from the early days of South African television when the sparse diet was three or four hours an evening. Today’s variety looks very tempting, full of alternatives, a veritable supermarket. In fact it’s more like just a few shelves in a supermarket and where, under gaudy packaging, most of the merchandise is more or less the same.
It is impossible to state accurately how many channels are currently available via DStv, simply because they’re still filling up the many gaps. It’s in the region of 50 but, as anyone with a decoder will affirm, after the first few weeks most subscribers look at just a few favourites.
Sport is well served up by DStv that is, if you are keen on watching a wide selection of second-string motorbike races, darts matches, innumerable golf tournaments and repeats of European soccer fixtures, and, in between these, an array of extremely boring studio discussions. There is an absorption limit to Naas Botha’s rugby deconstruction after which mental asthma sets in. Yes, yes, Russell; SuperSport has also cornered most of the important events, like the recent South African cricket tour and other international fixtures.
For foodies DStv offers a generous selection of culinary virtuosi; avid soapie addicts can watch literally dozens of the things. Movies are plentiful. Provided your taste is about as deep as a skidmark, you can enjoy “comedy romances” or “romantic thrillers” and even “real-life dramas”, one after another from dawn to dawn. Here and there something of some specific gravity creeps in, but most of the menu is tenaciously fluffhead.
DStv English news is provided by only three institutions, the BBC, Sky News and CNN SABC and e.tv fool’s English newscasts are also available here. The best documentaries come from the BBC. Children’s telly is provided by M-Net’s KTV and the very limited compilations of the Cartoon Channel.
What amazes is how much of DStv is material no one of any nous would want to watch: astrology charts, weather forecasts, television games, music video shows and who but stockbrokers need Bloomberg-type information streamer channels? Who sits and gazes at authentic People’s Democratic Cultural Committee-approved China Central Television, apart from a few desperate Jeremy Cronins? Do DStv clients fork out for too much they neither want nor ever will?
There is a very strong case to be made for DStv to offer its product on flexible terms. As it is, its clients have no choice at all. To use the supermarket analogy again, buying the DStv service is like going into Pick ‘n Pay to get some essentials and being forced to fill and pay for at least five trolleys of unwanted stuff before they’ll let you out the door.
Why doesn’t DStv offer a selection of different package sizes and prices? Say, a bargain buy of any 10 DStv channels at R50 a month. That would be about a fifth of its all-or-nothing R280 and also cater to the poorer end of society.
Some viewers might want an extended size with a few extra for the kids and granny’s soapies. I can already see the commercials: Incredible Average Domestic Bundle Special Offer! No less than 20 DStv channels for an amazing R75 per month! Offer only open to end of June! While Stocks Last!
What about weekend freebies and other customer-inducing options something like cellphone purveyors do? DStv could offer a free dish and decoder to those viewers who sign up for a minimum of two years. What about pay-as-you-watch? The possibilities are endless and existing technology can handle them.
As they have in the past, DStv will argue that its “customer base” is not yet robust enough to underwrite such awkward splittings of its “bouquet”. Counter-argument could suggest that if only DStv would chop out the dead wood of its magnificently inefficient administrative staff, it would gain a financial leeway of benefit to its customers. It’s called the marketplace, gentlemen and ladies of the DStv board. If it works for Vodacom it should work for you.
In every sense DStv is a corpulent monopoly that surpasses even what puny commercial morality we still have in these parts.