ON THE SPOT
MultiChoice CEO says the future is online, but playing fields need to be levelled
Regulation," tweeted RECM chairman Piet Viljoen last week, is "the last refuge of scoundrels". But pay-TV operator MultiChoice, which has called for the regulation of fast-growing video-streaming competitor Netflix, has hit back. Business Day spoke to MultiChoice CEO Calvo Mawela. We are not against any competitors entering the market; this company was built on the basis of entrepreneurship and being first to launch and that’s [our] DNA. Icasa … proposed that they needed to regulate pay television much more. We then said: this discussion would have been relevant 15 years ago when people consumed content only via satellite television such as ourselves. Today, the audiovisual sector is so wide that people consume on social media, YouTube and online shows — that’s where the future is going. We’ve also seen ourselves impacted so we’ve launched Showmax and DStv Now, our live-streaming service. But all this regulation … you are just making sure that we continue to be strangled, while onli...
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