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DStv BoxOffice snags 26% of subscribers

Cape Town – Despite a disastrous commercial launch in July when the service collapsed, MultiChoice's new video-on-demand (VOD) service – DStv BoxOffice – has signed up more than a quarter of all DStv premium households within two months.

This remarkable feat and other details are hidden in the small print of the interim financial results and presentation from Naspers for the six months until September 30 2011.

MultiChoice is Naspers' pay TV subsidiary, and according to the latest results the pay TV platform signed up 209 248 new DStv subscribers within South Africa until the end of September.

That means that MultiChoice now has 3.7 million household subscribers in South Africa.

Without providing specific numbers, DStv BoxOffice, which gives premium subscribers the opportunity to rent movies at R25 each in the window before it becomes available on pay TV channels, managed to snag 26% of all DStv premium subscribers with PVRs by the end of September.

That means that a quarter of all DStv premium subscribers registered for the service within two months.

SouthTel plans to roll out its own new VOD service, VOD:TV early in 2012, and On Digital Media (ODM) also has plans to launch a VOD service for TopTV when it introduces its own PVR commercially in 2012.

DStv Compact drives pay TV uptake in SA

Meanwhile M-Net analogue viewers – subscribers who get only the terrestrial M-Net channel – continues its sharp decline while M-Net is waiting for South Africa's switch-over to digital terrestrial television (DTT) from next year.

M-Net's analogue viewers dropped from 98 677 in September 2010 to 73 549 in September 2011.

Out of the new 209 248 DStv subscribers within South Africa that signed up for pay TV with MultiChoice, DStv Premium grew by 2%. DStv Compact grew by 13% and DStv Select grew by 18%.

DStv Compact is now by far the most popular bouquet fuelling MultiChoice's subscriber uptake. More than half of the 209 248 new DStv subscribers have opted for the Compact bouquet.

PVRs increasingly popular

MultiChoice's PVR subscribers in South Africa increased from 416 665 in September 2010 to 571 098 by September 2011. In the rest of Africa PVR subscribers over the same period increased from 73 739 to 89 177.

In the rest of Africa, MultiChoice grew its total subscriber base by 60 000 new DStv subscribers and now stands at 1.5 million DStv households.


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