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Cape Town - David Booth, chief content officer for MultiChoice Africa, revealed at the MultiChoice Content Showcase that MultiChoice will be adding a pop-up kids channel for the December period.
"We have big plans over the holiday period to bring in a kids' channel from Turner Broadcasting, for example,” said Booth at a panel discussion on Wednesday at the MultiChoice Africa Media Roundtable press conference in Mauritius.
Turner Broadcasting System (TBS) already supplies MultiChoice with kids’ channels like Cartoon Network (DStv 301) and the pre-school Cartoonito programming block, and Boomerang (DStv 302).
While Turner's Adult Swim TV channel is for 18+ viewers and therefore not a kids channel, it leaves channels like Boing, or Toonami (boys focused), or CN Too, as a second Cartoon Network channel as one of the possible channel options available from Turner Broadcasting to be joining DStv for a limited time period.
More pop-up channels in 2016
Booth also revealed that MultiChoice sees the current Star Wars pop-up channel from M-Net and The Walt Disney Company in Africa as "an experiment" and will be doing more of them in the future – at least 4 pop-up channels in 2016.
In 2014 MultiChoice and DStv had great success with the Oscar Pistorius Trial channel from Combined Artistis Productions in South Africa.
It was also a pop-up channel of which the ratings and viewership at certain times outperformed premium channels like M-Net (DStv 101) and made it the 4th most watched TV channel on pay-TV in South Africa.
"We want to be more fluid and offer more pop-up and events channels – it's very much part of our strategy.”
“Going forward, I see events channels offering fantastic opportunities,” said Booth.
“The Star Wars channel is an experiment, and it's also something we've done in the past with Big Brother Africa. It's our ambition to do four more pop-up and events channels in the next year.”
