DStv is looking into ways of letting customers subscribe only the channels they want to watch, instead of a limited basket\/bouquet of pre-selected channels.<\/p>\n
In an interview on the Money Show<\/a>, M-Net CEO Yolisa Phahle addressed the question of why viewers aren’t able to pick the channels they want to watch – particularly in a digital age.<\/p>\n “So that’s something which DStv are actually looking into at the moment, because more and more and more and more we hear that this is something consumers really are asking for,”\u00a0Phahle said.<\/p>\n “I guess for us its a challenge of trying to work out whether it ultimately – you are going to spend more – people are going to be unhappy because they are only going to be getting three channels and paying more than they were for 100 channels.<\/p>\n “The fact of the matter is, people are asking the question, and somehow, we’ve got to find a way to be able to give people what they want, because if we don’t – there are options today,” Phahle said in reference to the likes of Netflix and Showmax – which is also in the Naspers stable as a means to address the digital video-on-demand market.<\/p>\n In a recent interview with MyBroadband<\/a>, MultiChoice, the parent company of DStv, explained the difficulty of letting subscribers choose their own channels.<\/p>\n Nyiko Shiburi, MultiChoice\u2019s group general manager for broadcast technology, said the technology is built to place channels into a relatively small number of groups.<\/p>\n If you let each subscriber become their own group, this would place more strain on the system than the bandwidth offered by DStv\u2019s satellites could handle.<\/p>\n It could take days for a new subscriber to be activated if such individual channel selection were allowed, MultiChoice said.<\/p>\n The group also pointed to pricing consequences. To explain the model, Shiburi compared it to a gym. \u201cYou can\u2019t just pay for the treadmill,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Capital expenditure costs are high, so you have to package things in such a way that they become affordable to as many people as possible,” MultiChoice said.<\/p>\n The group\u00a0told MyBroadband that by packaging channels in the way it currently does\u00a0– into predetermined bouquets\u00a0– it makes the services more affordable.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are always improving choice and flexibility by improving our on-demand services, that is why we are looking at how we can further address that desire on various online platforms,\u201d Shiburi said.<\/p>\n DStv currently offers six different packages<\/a>:<\/p>\n