If there’s one thing DStv subscribers complain about is the number of repeats they are constantly served.
Not only did Multichoice denounce their customers claim they went one step further and said DStv has the lowest repeat rate in the world:
We actually have the lowest repeat rate in the world, there’s just no question about it.
Every time a supplier comes here or a third party channel, Aletta [General Manager of Content at Multichoice] will say ‘What more have you got?
How can we bring people more content and reduce our repeats and we’re always told that our repeat rate is incredibly low?
Yolisa Phahle – MultiChoice General Entertainment CEO
In fact, the official gave some clarity and said the reason why South Africans still feel like there is excessively repeated content is because African households watch too much TV – around 5-6 hours daily.
Whilst these are the claims coming from MultiChoice the only evidence I could find from We Are Social’s digital report for 2019 on South Africa noted that the average watch time for South Africans, in particular, is only 2 hours 57 minutes – just under 3 hours.
A number of people on social media dismissed Multichoice’s claims as bogus and ultimately even if the claim of lowest repeat rates is true, if their consumer base still feels that is a problem, is that not something Multichoice should be looking to solve? I think it is, because if the average African household decided to watch less TV – that could have a negative impact on MultiChoice.
8 comments
I can now tell the writer of an article by the lack of in-depth facts presented in an article. I read this, to the end, thought to myself, how many hours of new content are produced in a year versus the number of hours available to users for them to watch the content. Then I asked, did the writer bother to look this up or ask the same questions? My guess was the author is Farai Mudzingwa, and viola, that’s the name right at the top lol. I’m just saying my guy, you would do we well to look at the three sides of a coin before drawing a conclusion.
Searched for average viewership and the only country in sub-Saharan Africa that has these readily available is South Africa – this is not me being defensive but me raising the point that sometimes information is not as available to access as you might guess. Ended up stumbling on the stats for South Africa’s average watch time whilst looking for the average watch time on the continent as a whole.
Another reason why I referenced South Africa’s watch time was just to display that in the country where the 5-6 hour stat (which isn’t backed by any evidence) was brought up, other research reached different conclusions. Not sure if that’s enough context as to why I decided to present it the way I did.
Also not entirely clear on how many hours of new content produced in a year vs number of hours available to watch would necessarily assist. Care to explain that a bit more so I fully understand what you mean?
“Viola” did you mean voila? And when did coins start having three sides? I asked myself what person would write this? Then I realised I don’t care enough to fi
I think the repeat complaints are indeed getting unreasonable though. The problem is that they wanna watch the same TYPE of content and expect a different option every hour. So a telenovela viewer will only watch telenovelas, not bother with nature or history or news or sports or movies – but then expect the full day to have a different telenovela each hour – IT DOESN’T WORK LIKE THAT.
Reasonable logic there. I think its quite reasonable how content is distributed in such a way that there are repeats, for the viewers that would not have seen such content at the time of initial broadcast. What I think needs to be done is for service providers of entertainment like DStv to look into how they can show people in a simple understandable way how this system works and try to reason with subscribers on the benefits of having a greater range of content to access. I believe the problem is that a sizable portion of the subscriber base subscribe to lower tier bouquets which have less variety and a narrow range of content to access. So they are left with only a few channels they enjoy and when time comes for repeats they do not have other options. The problem is to access greater range of content to access which would be more quality channels – that is higher tier bouquets, means more money to pay for the subscriber which they might not be able to afford. I was once a subscriber myself. Afforded lower tier bouquets. Now can’t afford even the lowest due to economic challenges.
Perhaps the issue is no business really wants to expose how they work, but perhaps a little transparency would help things more. But such is the state of things in today’s world. The successful thrive on ‘little lies’, not really wanting to come fully into the light.
Perhaps the issue is no business really wants to expose how they work, but perhaps a little transparency would help things more. But such is the state of things in today’s world. The successful thrive on ‘little lies’, not really wanting to come fully into the light.
Maybe that’s where their competitive advantage lies so they’ll keep it zipped