After slightly more than 8 years on the DStv platform, the platform has decided to not renew its contract with the Eurocentric news service.
The main reasons cited for the termination is low viewership and poor viewer feedback on the channel.
Back on September 6th 2012, DStv moved the channel off of its extremely favourable channel number 404 where it was just one press of the P+ button away from eNCA which back then had well more than 60% market share, therefore Euronews attracted many casual viewers who were looking for news durin ad breaks.
Where did the platform move the channel to? The abyss of channel number 414, after the Russian centric RT, Parliamentary Service, chinese centric CCTV News and the commerce channels and overall the second last channel of DStv's well more than 100 channels. In other words, a channel number where it could, and did, get lost.
A few months later in April 2013, the channel was made available to DStv's Family and Compact bouquets as well (It doesn't take too long to figure out why that move was made).
The channel is the only news channel on the platform that is anchor free, depending solely on voice overs and translators for live events. This could be seen as a downfall whereby a channel that lacks any on air personalities is getting lost in a market where personality-driven news is where virtually all news broadcasters are headed to.
Having no anchors also meant that the channel could easily implement what has to be by far its most identifiable trait, being available in multiple languages. These languages were, for the most part: English, French, German, Portuguese and Spanish(all of which, with the exception of Spanish, has their own DStv bouquets). At some point, however, the Portuguese feed was dropped, though there wasn't exactly a viewer outcry.
There are now 15 news and commercial news channels on the DStv platform.
It happens to be one of the few channels worth watching ... But of course, we are in Africa! HALLO live streaming and bye DSTV! Wolfie
ReplyDeleteThough I did not watch the channel too often myself, it was nice having that option of a 'cleaner' news bulletin there.
ReplyDeleteDSTV - From bad to worse! We now have Russian, Chinese etc news and bet you the next one will be a Brazil news channel to please the BRICS powers to be.
ReplyDeleteJustlike all the repeat programmes of Extreme Makeover series that was aired first in the USA in 2003. Why not scrap all the existning programmes and only air cooking programmes and more football channels.
Here goes a service that aired unbiased news from Europe. I specifically liked the multilingual aspect. The programme covers the day to day news from around the World as well as technology- and cultural and arts aspects. There is no equivalent on the DStv platform. Contrary to above release there is no German bouquet except for DW for a few Hrs during the day. To get German language content one has to subscribe to the very expensive Deukom. I am a premium subscriber for many Years and have witnessed the steady decline in the quality of the offerings. I accept that a subscription service must be viable and profitable to satisfy the expectations of the share-holders of which I am one. The constant repeats of many" ancient all new" shows are frustrating in the least. My hope is that data cost come down in SA. I will then link up to Internet feeds.
ReplyDeleteFor those of us on the Compact bouquet it was one of the better European News channels on DStv in my opinion, and that of my wife who is a journalist who has been writing for numerous national newspapers and knows good journalism.
ReplyDeleteAnd that weather tune, absolutely loved it!