Sunday, July 31, 2011

BREAKING. TopTV on new channels: 'We will be making announcements around the acquisition of new content in the next couple of months.'

While TopTV CEO Vino Govender told TV with Thinus in January this year that it won't be launching a PVR or high definition (HD) channels in 2011, subscribers and the industry are wondering about new TopTV channels, with TopTV now saying announcements about new content will be made within months.

With many broken promises and constantly pushed-out and revised dates for new TV channels since its launch last May - and zero new TV channels that's been added in 2011 and no real sports channel - TopTV has no credibility left when it comes to channel launch information. The industry and subscribers have become very sceptical of whether TopTV can really add new TV channels, ever since Vino Govender promised at the launch in May 2011 several new channels within 7 months which didn't happen, as well as a sport channel which so far haven't realized.

Yet the pay TV platform tells me ''TopTV will be making some announcements around the acquisition of new content in the next couple of months''. TopTV says ''the acquisition of content is an ongoing priority and even where we haven't been not been able to obtain full TV channels, we are securing content which is first and exclusive to TopTV, for example Steven Spielberg's Falling Skies.''

I broke the new RIGHT HERE at the beginning of the month that TopTV viewership is now being measured by the South African Advertising Research Foundation (Saarf)
and this past week I had the news that that ratings information won't be broken down or be available for separate TopTV channels.

Now I can also tell you that the first independent TopTV ratings information - which will give an indication of how many people are actually watching TopTV, will be available for the first time from this coming Thursday.

ALSO READ: TopTV set to talk in September, pay TV operator says its subscriber number is now ''in excess of 200 000''.