Sunday 1 February 2009

DIS'-SA-TV-A

Written for South Africa's unfortunate television watchers

Like the music industry before it, the television industry is undergoing an end-consumer-focussed revolution. This is already happening in in the US through hulu.com, sling.com and Apple's iTunes Store.

There, the television user benefits in particular from:

1 Being able to pay for only the show(s) he or she wants, being able to download and view them when convenient,
2 Having advance notice of the series one is interested in, plus convenient access to an extensive back catalogue to 'fill in any series gaps',
3 Reduced (or no) advertising interrupting programming.

South Africans can only dream of such a service being offered locally... sigh! Wouldn't it be great if a future broadcaster offered to:
  • Charge you only for what you (wanted to) watch,
  • Provide a service that fitted into your schedule {versus yours into its},
  • Notified you as soon as new episodes in a series you enjoyed watching are available,
  • Made back-series and old movies readily-available,
  • Informed you if any new channels feature content that you may like,
  • And (perhaps, most optimistically) delivered a no-advertising TV service for an extra fee!

At present, I believe I'm overpaying for MNET's DSTV service. It simply does not offer good value to its pickier, low-volume users.

It's my (naive?) hope that the new entrants into South Africa's TV-broadcasting industry design their products for end-customers like me... versus its traditional benefactors; meatball advertisers :)!


3 comments :

  1. Vote for the new SABC board member, Travis Noakes. He is the Dali Mpofu of Newlands, a true visionary in the Snuki Zikalala mould... except there are no skeletons in his closet ;)!

    ReplyDelete
  2. It would also be great if there was some logic behind the placement of adverts in movies (by SABC3 especially; its viewers had to wait over 10 minutes during the "Importance of Being Earnest" to see a Parlotones promotional ad! What the relationship between these is, only some halfwit TV programmer might know...)

    ReplyDelete
  3. If you enjoyed this post, check out 'Why Multichoice's DSTV won't be offering a less-expensive, pay-per-view service anytime soon.' at http://www.travisnoakes.co.za/2012/07/why-multichoices-dstv-wont-be-offering.html.

    ReplyDelete

This blog is moderated due to problems experienced by a few readers who could not submit unmoderated comments. Please keep your comment length under 300 words; any longer and you will struggle to submit it. Ta, Travis.

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