The Ministry for Women, Children and Persons with Disabilities on Friday welcomed an announcement by MultiChoice that there will be no launch of a pornographic channel on DSTV.
“The decision to abandon the idea is in line with the efforts to protect children from accessing pornographic material,” spokesperson Sibani Mngadi said.
“The decision also underlines the necessity to protect human dignity of women who are often projected in a negative and degrading manner in such media products.
“The country has to work with its media sector to ensure that women are not presented as inferior beings or exploited as sexual objects and commodities,” Mngadi said.
MultiChoice South Africa’s group chief executive officer, Nolo Letele said on Thursday that research indicated that a significant portion of subscribers were against adult channels.
This, however, was also while other people were indifferent to it and another significant number were positive.
The decision comes after MultiChoice announced last month that it was conducting research on the idea of launching a porn channel.
The announcement of the porn channel related survey sparked objections from some organisations and prompted Solidarity to launch a campaign whereby the public voted against the launch of such a channel on DSTV.
By Wednesday a total of 41 381 South Africans had already voted no to the channel in Solidarity’s Helping Hand campaign.
“It was unfortunate that the research conducted was misinterpreted by some people to mean that a decision was made to introduce an adult content channel on our bouquets,” Letele said.
He said MultiChoice regularly conducted research to test viewer’s tastes and impressions of existing and new television channels to improve customer service.
This research often included questions looking at content requested by consumers or channels that succeed abroad, Letele said.
“The research survey conducted about three weeks ago focused on adult content since some competitors about to launch in South Africa may or may not include adult channels on their services.” — Sapa