Author: Toby Shapshak

Instead of getting the rights to broadcast the Rugby World Cup on its Openview satellite service, eMedia will have to pay legal costs after its court case against MultiChoice was been struck off the roll by the Johannesburg High Court. The free ride is over MultiChoice said it was “vindicated” after the urgent interdict hearing was dismissed, and said eMedia was “directed” by the court to pay its legal costs, as well as those of its subsidiary SuperSport, including the counsel. “The effect of the High Court’s decision is that the position remains that the Springbok matches at the Rugby…

DStv-owner MultiChoice has countersued eMedia over the contentious broadcast rights for the Rugby World Cup. Marc Jury, the CEO of MultiChoice South Africa, says eMedia’s lawsuit is a “classic example of free riding” in the broadcaster’s replying affidavit for an urgent interdict being heard today – 10 October – in the Johannesburg High Court. eMedia, you’ve been served… “Despite having the opportunity to acquire a licence to the rights in question, the applicants did not take a single step to participate in the process for purchasing broadcasting rights directly,” Jury said, as reported by MyBroadband. “A broadcaster having a genuine…

Like every journalist attending a conference in the past decade, I take notes with my laptop on my legs. Every now and then, a presenter will put up a useful, data-heavy slide, I take a picture of it with my phone. Sometimes I look back at those images, but mostly, they fall into the void that is my phone’s gallery. But, when I make the effort to – for want of a better word – sync my notes with my images, I always find useful extra information for an article. Take note(s) I am trying to reinvent how I use tech when…

In another late, come-from-behind victory, the SABC secured the rights to the Cricket World Cup – after the tournament already started. Cricket-loving South Africans will be able to watch the sporting showpiece after yet another 11th-hour agreement between the public broadcaster and MultiChoice, which owns the rights. Whether that means the Proteas will be any good at this event is an entirely different conversation. Unlike the Springboks, the current rugby world champions, the country’s cricketers have an unfortunate habit of choking (yes, the first way to deal with a problem is to admit it). Airing out some dirty linen The SABC aired…

At least we don’t have to pay a TV licence for our smartphones. That’s about the only good thing to take from the new SABC Bill being proposed in parliament. Like the previous attempts at finding a new way to fund the SABC – instead of the absurd licence fees that only a small fraction of people still pay – this bill is out of touch with the current reality. Unlike Planet SABC, the real world doesn’t march to the beat of the ANC’s drum. As the first SABC legislation in 24 years, the SABC Bill is “a huge disappointment,”…

Another World Cup, another SABC broadcast bungle. Or is it another MultiChoice bungle? Just over a month since it resolved the free-to-air rights for the Rugby World Cup, this time the public broadcaster is ensnared in another broadcast rights fight with MultiChoice for the ICC Cricket World Cup 2023. It really is hard to say who is at fault, given how these are events that happen regularly every four years, except many South Africans will now miss the Proteas’ usual early exit. MultiChoice released a statement on Tuesday, hitting the negotiations for a six. “After prolonged negotiations, the SABC last…

eMedia, which owns both e.tv and the Openview free-to-air satellite service, has taken MultiChoice to court to get the rights to show the Rugby World Cup. The Springboks beat Tonga on Sunday and are almost certainly through to the quarter-finals, no matter what Scotland do and the numerical conspiracy theories say. Siya Kolisi will captain the world champions against hosts France on Sunday, 15 October, at 21:00 SAST – in one of the most anticipated games of the tournament. After a last-minute contract agreement by the SABC with MultiChoice specifically excluded rights for Openview, eMedia warned in early September that…

Having launched a brand new (and free) banking service for consumers, Bank Zero has turned its attention to business banking. Michael Jordaan, the neobank’s chair, says the company is bringing the “simple, effective and technology-driven approach” to banking for businesses. “Bank Zero is ushering an innovative new approach far from the legacy ‘me-too’ solutions of traditional banks,” he says. “We have completely rethought commercial banking to bring it into the digital age. We’ve built it from the ground up, which means we have no legacy systems that are both cumbersome and costly, leading to inefficiency and high bank charges.” Built…

MTN wants you to use its MoMo service to avoid getting robbed, send remittances to other countries, run your small business with it, and buy pre-paid funeral cover. All with a mobile phone. If you run a spaza shop, MTN wants to replace two point-of-sale (POS) devices (one for accepting card payments, the other for buying airtime, electricity and the lottery) with a single mobile terminal. There are 9 million MoMO registered users in South Africa. The relaunched MTN MoMo SA app offers this functionality, as well as making it easier for someone to sign up for an account. The…

Europe’s war against privacy issues keeps on rolling, with TikTok being the latest social media platform to be fined. This fine – amounting to €345 million or R6.8 billion – was for how it dealt with children’s accounts under the EU’s very strict General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) privacy legislation. The Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC), which oversees TikTok because its European headquarters are in Dublin, found the app’s “public-by-default” settings meant anyone could see what a child posted, whether they were TikTok subscribers or not. The DPC also targeted its “Family Pairing” feature, which allowed an adult’s account to…