We are standing on the edge of the plateau on which we have happily lived and worked all our lives. The plateau is called “Analogue Day Part TV Broadcasting, with some pay TV for the affluent who can afford it.”
We are being pushed over that cliff into the new world of Digital Terrestrial TV and low cost pay TV. We don’t have a choice. We are literally there. If you don’t have a map of this new land, and cute little parachute of skills to let you down, they pick you up at the bottom of the cliff in a spoon.
Getting a handle on the techniques of multichannel scheduling, and filling many channels with local content for niche audiences presents no difficulty at all for you if your eyes are open and you see that it’s already happening. It’s there, and it’s proven.
M-net was a tentative move into pay-TV but it was a day-parted single channel. (Day-parted: morning show, then kiddies; lunchtime show; then youth; followed by prime time and after 9:00 pm – watershed.)
DStv came on the scene on 1995 (I believe the second satellite pay bouquet in the world, following the first by a matter of weeks).
Four years later, the pioneer came on the scene: KykNET the first fully Afrikaans channel. By definition, it had to be 100% local content. Since local content costs ten times foreign licensed content, it looked financially dicey. But no pay TV operator will introduce a costly new channel unless it primarily brings in new subscribers.
In those days, the subscription cost was very high and limited to the upper LSM’s only. On top of it, it was safe to assume that those Afrikaans speaking people who wanted the channel, and could afford it, were already subscribers.
But it worked, and was a hit from the start. The channel had bought up all the best Afrikaans films of the previous 60 years, and presented a mix of talk, lifestyle and movies – with kiddies (Tjommies) suitably day-parted.
Why this is important is that all broadcasters will firstly be presented with lower cost Top TV, and the others (SABC, E.tv and M-Net) are being issued with digital terrestrial licenses.
What’s freaking them out is how do they fill each channel with 24 hours of programming, and select the dedicated niche audience that makes the channel payable?
The answer lies right in front of their noses with the Afrikaans channels on DStv that are produced by M-Net: KykNET, Koowee and MK. KykNET started off cheap – it gave its producers long term contracts and low cost per hour, which is possible with a year or two contract. That covered all, the talk, lifestyle, music and sport programmes.
KykNET actually did deliver. If you were Afrikaans speaking, you had two choices: a few hours a day on SABC2, or everyday on KykNET. The amazing thing about entertainment is that if people really want it, they’ll find the money. This is what out of work American did during the Great Depression. They were broke, but they found the money to pay for and finance the Golden Years of MGM lavish musicals.
Five years later KykNET is the channel of choice for all Afrikaans speakers, White and Coloured. The SABC has tried hard to poach the market, but it cannot offer the lure of 24 hours entertainment in your own language.
KykNET now produces soaps, dramas, reality and action, and all on decent budgets. It has spun off two other channels, one for kids, and another as a VH1-type.
Villa Rosa in a typical week pulls in 220 000 viewers. Some programmes pull in 15% Coloureds.
M-Net’s experiences here offer a few solid rules:
If people want a channel in their language, or reflecting their own culture or interests badly enough, they will find the money to pay for it.
You define your target, so that no matter how small, you can deliver exactly what they want. You start off small but irresistible. You also acknowledge that viewers are very forgiving of low cost production as long as it goes to their hearts (look at how forgiving the Africa Magic viewers are!).
You make programmes Fit for Purpose – you give the audience just enough quality and quality to keep them grateful.
You do cross media deals with all the other specific media.
So, who’s going to look at the Zulu Channel; the ZCC Channel; and the opera and ballet channel?
(First appeared in The Media April 2010)
busvannah 