Johannesburg - The SABC will finally deliver on its ambitions of having a fully-fledged sports channel.
This comes after the SABC entered into an agreement with eMedia’s free-to-air satellite service, Openview.
As part of the agreement, SABC 1, 2 and 3 will be carried on Openview, including a new sports channel. Openview will also carry the SABC’s radio stations, including regional radio stations.
The SABC said the deal was within the prescript of the public mandate as Openview’s satellite service was free-to-air.
The SABC said the deal would mark its foray into the free-to-air satellite space.
SABC chief operations officer Ian Plaatjes said the SABC Sports channel would be distributed on Openview, Telkom One, DTT and other streaming platforms. The SABC entered into a streaming agreement with Telkom last year.
“This agreement enables the SABC to grow its channel offering and reach into the digital broadcasting space with three additional HD television channels. The first channel to be launched will be the SABC Sports Channel and will be distributed simultaneously across Openview, DTT, Telkom One and other streaming platforms.
“This collaboration will enable the SABC to optimally exploit its rich sport content rights and leverage the Openview reach to provide an improved integrated sport value proposition for our advertising clients across platforms,” he said.
Plaatjes said the other two channels would be announced within the next three months. He said the channels would depend largely on the SABC’s archived content.
eMedia Investments chief operating officer Antonio Lee said they were excited about the partnership.
“The agreement ushers in a new level of collaboration between a private free-to-air satellite platform and public free-to-air broadcast services. There is no doubt it will boost the offering of Openview and will extend the SABC’s audience reach.
“We can now offer our Openview audience additional quality content and access to digital broadcast radio in the widest variety of languages possible in South Africa. We hope this is the start of a stronger and more fruitful relationship between Openview and the SABC," he said.
IOL