It was eventually found in a tub of Lego. Let me tell you about one of the many very minor crises of the Great Covid Lockdown of April 2020. Towards the end of the strict five-week lockdown, our three-year-old son lost our DStv remote.
No tech stores were open, while grocery stores generally don’t stock DStv remotes.
We watched the news through the DStv Now app for three days, until we played with that box of Lego.
It was a subtle reminder of how important, even in this age of streaming, access to news is. Our TV sets have evolved — as have our habits — into a hub of entertainment and gaming and bingeing. In the early spasms of the pandemic — which history will look back on as a strange generalised public temporary madness – we were fixated with the news.
Seeing as TVs and screens have become necessary for our new bingeing addictions, it was a return to a more glorious age for TV news. The media industry is not just an essential service, in Covid-19 jargon, but part of the lifeblood of democracy. It’s a reminder of the importance of news — and that most people can only get news provided by public broadcasters.
Over the past few years I’ve lost count of the conversations I’ve had (especially in the past three months) about "cutting the cord", the phrase used in the US for cancelling cable TV in favour of online streaming services.
The media industry is not just an essential service but part of the lifeblood of democracy
It used to be an either-or decision. Either cable (so-called because it literally used a cable, an early precursor to fibre) or Netflix. But when the copyright owners of Friends discovered it was the most-watched show on Netflix, they realised they could make money by starting their own subscription service, instead of getting a percentage of revenue of someone else’s.
At the same time, Netflix evolved from being an archive of old material into a $8bn-a-year production studio, while Amazon Prime, Apple and Disney have ramped up their productions — as have many other studios.
Now most consumers need to subscribe to multiple services to get all the content they want. I have three subscriptions. DStv is my primary video subscription, irreplaceable for news and sport, followed by Netflix and Showmax (which is now bundled with DStv Premium).
I was glad to see MultiChoice say it would include Netflix and Amazon Prime in its new Explora decoder, due later this year. That’s clever. Many people without smart TVs don’t have a device — called a set-top box by the industry — to play a streaming service. In SA, the largest installed base of set-top boxes are DStv decoders. Not all can play Netflix, but if you’re going to upgrade your decoder, it makes sense if it can also stream the competition. Netflix has an all-you-can eat policy but Amazon cleverly sells other services (HBO, Apple TV+ and Disney+). MultiChoice is clearly adopting some of the latter’s strategy.
As Sun Tzu, the original urban poet, said: keep your friends close but your enemies closer.
- Shapshak is editor-in-chief and publisher of Stuff magazine
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.