Tag: MultiChoice

Multichoice, SABC deal raise hackles

A controversial five-year, R550 million deal between Multichoice and the SABC has drawn sharp criticism from some industry stakeholders

A R550 million deal between Multichoice and the SABC, which will hand over a large deal of control over the SABC’s news operations to the DStv owner, is being challenged by industry stakeholders.

Three groups – Caxton Publishers, Media Monitoring Africa and SOS: Support Public Broadcasting Coalition – have approached the Competition Tribunal saying that the deal is not in the public interest.

In a press statement by Media Monitoring Africa, it said that the deal entered into between the SABC and Multichoice, in which Multichoice acquired control over part of the SABC business, constitutes a mandatory notifiable merger.

Media Monitoring Africa (MMA) started in 1993 and is a non-profit organisation that aims to promote democracy and a culture where media and the powerful respect human rights and encourage a just and fair society.

“We are not aware of any attempt to notify the Competition Tribunal of such a merger. If the deal is proven to be a notifiable merger it will enable us to oppose the merger on the basis that it is not in the public interest for it to take place,” MMA said.

“When news of the deal broke in 2013, both MMA and SOS expressed deep concern as to the nature of the deal. We both believe it fundamentally works against the best and long term interests of the SABC and the people it serves.”

Media Monitoring Africa expressed three main concerns with the deal:

Handing over the SABC archive: The SABC has handed over power and control of its archives to Multichoice. The archives are an invaluable public asset, and giving control and access of the archive to a commercial player SABC has sold off the family jewels.

Encryption turnaround: The SABC effectively ceded its power to determine its policy on set-top box control to a commercial broadcasting entity that is also its competitor.

Best programming veto: The deal sets out terms for a future channel to be developed by the SABC, where Multichoice may veto some programmes and select only the best ones to be broadcast exclusively on the SABC-Multichoice platform. The deal therefore ensures the best future local programming is aired on DStv, and that citizens who do not subscribe to the Multichoice services will be denied viewing of the programmes.

A report by The Sunday Independent newspaper, titled “Diabolical and secret SABC TV deal exposed”, said that the Multichoice-SABC “Commercial and Master Channel Distribution Agreement” has been kept from public view under a confidentiality provision.

The report further stated that even the SABC board was kept in the dark regarding the deal which was signed in July 2013.

However, because it forms part of the Competition Tribunal case, and thanks to the Supreme Court of Appeal ruling in the City of Cape Town versus Sanral case, it is now a public document.

SABC spokesman Kaizer Kganyago told The Sunday Independent that the SABC would never allow its news operations to be influenced by another broadcaster.

Multichoice in turn said that it has not exerted any influence on SABC news. They added that they have many news channels on its DStv platform, and that performance requirements come standard with such agreements.

Source: mybraodband.co.za

Afrikaners are a lost cause, Dan Roodt

By English-speaking Patriot

Dear Dan Roodt, congratulations on your letter about apartheid in Business Day and here on praag.org. And did you see the knee jerk reaction from the liberals, the Afrikaans jingoes and the “others” in Business Day? Always guaranteed to defend the shambles, as you put it. I’ll never understand these people. They go against nature!

As far as Woolworths is concerned, I have boycotted them entirely. But others haven’t. The wording of their advertised “explanation” was ambiguous, so their actual racist advertisements need to be circulated so that everyone can see just what they are doing.

 MultiChoice did the same thing – gave shares only to blacks. Yet most of MultiChoice customers are white. Nobody said a word.

 I can tell you that all universities, all government departments, all municipalities and most private job advertising refer to “Employment Equity” and the other euphemisms they use to discriminate. People whine about this to the newspapers, but that’s as far as it goes. There will always be whites who will do the catering for these morons when they gorge themselves at their “conferences”, there will always be whites who will set up the sound system for their ridiculous rallies, there will always be whites who will provide the flowers for their funerals, and there will always be whites who, as you say, keep the whole show on the road. And look at the farmers! Do you think they will ever stand together and hold back the food for just one week? Not on your life!

 It is difficult to get the whites to do anything. Especially Afrikaners, they simply sit back and suffer so very politely. They don’t want to be  omstrede. They will die from ordentlikheid! They watch the department stores remove Afrikaans signs from within their stores, and they do nothing. Frankly, my feeling is they deserve what they get. Fancy buying the Beeld every day, the biggest piece of twisted and traitorous journalism I’ve ever seen in my life! And they’ve been doing this for as long as I can remember.  They are giving soup to squatters and illegals, and their churches have made them so “lam” that it is a world phenomenon!

 These third-world cretins are laughing all the way to the bank. There is no unity  within Afrikanerdom, and if there are three together, one is a traitor. You’ve only got to look at the Boeremag trial. Without the Afrikaans informers, there would never have been a Boeremag. Yet these traitors walk around without a care in the world, getting their traitorous salaries from the ANC who are destroying their own Afrikaans people!

 In Ireland they would have had their knees capped. And what do the Palestinians do with their traitors?

 No Dan Roodt, they are a lost cause. There is no spirit, no sense of an eye for an eye, and they are awash with “it’s God’s will” and other such nonsense. They are living martyrs, no different from those who were thrust into the Colosseum in ancient Rome, ready to die for their “faith” and ending up as bones in the catacombs.

 It makes me sick to my stomach!