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Cape Town – MultiChoice’s content boss, Aletta Alberts, is explaining why DStv subscribers are complaining about repeats and how pay-TV operators like MultiChoice are rapidly changing due to technology, social media and consumer demands.
Aletta Alberts, MultiChoice’s general manager for content, spoke at Kantar Media’s recent World Audiences Summit in Cape Town and told the trade publication The Media how she is seeing pay-TV services like MultiChoice changing.
She explained to The Media why DStv subscribers complain about repeats and how the pay-TV model and MultiChoice, in terms of its content offering, is evolving.
"Gone are the days when broadcasters just pushed content to consumers and they have to be happy with what you push to them. It's much more of a two way conversation now and the key thing for us as DStv is that we put the consumer at the centre of everything that we do now. Everything that we do is designed around our consumers."
"In future, the pay-TV model will be very different," said Alberts.
"I think it will be a hybrid of linear channels –stuff that you still watch live, I think it will have major social media integration, so your live sport events and your big live entertainment shows where people want to be part of the social media conversation and they can't afford not to watch it live."
"I think it will be combined with binge viewing, and viewing that is much more personalised - not shows that's made for channels where people watch in mass audiences. But I can now watch my Japanese game show if I want to because it's on demand and I can find it somewhere, or I can watch the science fiction drama that they don't offer on a channel."
"On top of that I can't watch everything at the same time," said Aletta Alberts.
"I think that's often the frustration for people and why they think there's so many repeats because they're only watching in prime time and often they don't watch enough of a repertoire of TV channels."
"So I think with a combination of channels and video-on-demand and catch-up services, it allows audiences to have a much wider selection of content."
"Already consumers will tell us if they have a DStv PVR, they'll say there's too much content, they can't watch everything. Whereas if they only have a linear experience, they'll say 'All I see is repeats'. So I think it's finding that balance."
Alberts said MultiChoice in future is "going to become much more of a curator of content. Over time we will probably have a personal profile and we'll push a playlist to you."
"I think that's where the role of a pay-TV platform like us will become really important as a trusted content recommendation source, rather than just a selection and a bouquet of channels."
