If you love watching the same five episodes of Friends over and over again, or want to see The Dark Knight for the umpteenth time then you’ll love both DStv’s and Openview’s new ‘anti-load shedding’ channels. The purpose of these is to offer content that people may have missed during whatever stage of load shedding we’ve currently got on loop.
In other words, they’re channels with one purpose: show reruns (almost) all day long. As the saying goes: “Stick to what you know.”
Rerun. Rinse. Rerun.
DStv’s new channel, dubbed ‘SWITCH’D ON’ is available on the platform from today, 24 January, and will focus on reruns from Mzansi Magic, Mzansi Wethu, and Kyknet & Kie. Speaking about the launch of its new channel, it said “this intervention will give viewers up to five times to watch their favourite primetime shows when the lights come back on.”
Whether a show needs to run five times for the population to catch up on missed episodes is debatable. It sounds more like a way to run as many ads as other channels at a 5x cheaper operation cost. But again, that’s debatable.
Read More: DStv finally adds Disney+ to its Streama box
DStv’s new channel is available to Premium, Compact Plus, Compact, Access, and Family customers. There is a small caveat for the viewers in the Access and Family tiers – they’ll be given access to the channel an hour and a half later than everybody else. Customers in the Premium and Compact tiers will be able to open the channel from 06:00 AM and close at midnight on channel 109. Family and Access subscribers can find the reruns on channel 110 from 7:30 AM until midnight.
Reruns galore
Openview’s new channel uses a similar concept to that of DStv’s and is known as the ‘Power-UP!’ channel. “Power-UP! is the new pop-up channel that ensures viewers never miss a show again — no matter how your load-shedding schedule changes,” said the broadcaster.
The channel launched yesterday, Monday 23 January, and shows reruns from loads of E-tv series with a few Afrikaans dramas thrown in for good measure (only on weekends). Find the pop-up on channel 114, which opens at 06:00 AM every day and closes at midnight.
Source: BusinessTech