2 minute read
Broadcasting
More choice for viewers – more challenges for content providers
The arrival of digital terrestrial television in South Africa means more choice and better quality signals for viewers. But it will also challenge traditional, linear TV models more than ever before, as Megan Walker, a media strategist at digital marketing agency The MediaShop, told Vaughan O’Grady.
DTT will mean more choice – and changing viewing trends.
DIGITAL TERRESTRIAL TELEVISION (DTT) is finally coming to much of Africa. But what is DTT? Simply put, DTT uses a network of TV transmission towers on earth to transmit signals that are digital instead of analogue. DTT offers better picture and sound quality, more options (including additional channels) for consumers, and frees up the radio frequency spectrum for mobile broadband services.
This won’t, incidentally, affect users of satellite TV. DTT and satellite television are simply different ways of broadcasting a signal. Satellite television broadcasts to a satellite dish. DTT uses transmitters on the ground to broadcast the signal, which you then receive using a TV aerial and set top box (STB).
But STBs are a challenge – one that South African DTT rollout is trying to address. When South Africa goes fully digital, everyone currently using a TV aerial will need an STB (also called a decoder), which will decode the digital signal. Without this there’s no picture.
Hence the South Africa government’s Broadcasting Digital Migration (BDM) plan and funding to help poorer households (about five million of them) get STBs. Signal distributors are being asked to roll out the digital network infrastructure on behalf of broadcasters. One such distributor is Sentech, a South African state-owned company and leading provider of electronic communications network services to the country’s broadcasting and communications industry. The South African Post Office will disburse the subsidized STBs.
That’s good news for job creation, of course. The digital migration process will require people for the manufacturing, installation and repair of STBs and antennas as well as call centres for consumer support.
While the intended benefits of DTT include reaching unserved areas, and cheaper access to the internet, there’s also a bonus in freeing up radio spectrum for mobile phone services. But it’s taken a long time: the original International Telecommunication Union deadline for the changeover was 2015.
Things are changing now, but, as Megan Walker, a media strategist at digital marketing agency The MediaShop, told us, more TV doesn’t always mean more opportunities for everyone. It’s true that, with greater access to digital services and the internet on offer consumers will embrace non-linear or streamed viewing. “Consumers faced with choice and lowered costs or barriers to entry in general will take up that choice,” she said.
They will no doubt welcome more streaming services and channels. However, advertisers may not as the audiences fragment. Walker said: “The overall TV universe is likely to decline, so achieving the same reach levels will not be possible,” adding, “In fact we have seen this for some time now, even prior to the DTT transition.”
This, she pointed out, is due both to the proliferation of content available for consumption and the fact that it can be consumed via multiple devices. Many of these
