Let me count the ways that we can compare Naspers and Avusa: the bull and the bear; the quick and the dead; diamonds and dogs. The two media companies released their annual results – for the year to March 31 2010 – in the past week, prompting many a smarty-pants media writer such as myself to group the two companies together.

It makes for a dramatic business story because, 15 years ago, the companies were of a similar size but now Naspers is an aggressive multinational that has forged an adventurous and lucrative path into the digital arena in countries such as China and Russia. The sexiest thing you can say about Avusa, however, is that it is the owner of the Sunday Times but even that has lost its cachet. Once South Africa’s biggest paper, that title now goes to the Daily Sun, owned by – you guessed it – Naspers.

So while Naspers seems savvy, Avusa appears shambolic. Naspers is bold and brave. Avusa doesn’t seem to have a plan.

But is it really fair to compare the two? Avusa is actually in the “B” league, same as Caxton, the printing firm and owners of The Citizen and a large number of community papers. Caxton’s financial year-end is at the end of June, so its annual results will be out in about September. Naspers is in the “A” league -and uniquely so in South Africa.

Click here to get a handle on the scope of the Naspers empire that spans the newspapers and magazines of Media24 (such as City Press and Rapport) to MultiChoice in SA and across the continent to Internet operations in Brazil, Eastern Europe and India. Now click here to have a look at Avusa’s company structure, which is SA-based (in fact the company pulled back a few years ago from Africa) and mostly old media: newspapers, book publishing, cinema, book stores and music.

So, separating the two companies out, what do the analysts say about them?….. Click here to read the rest of the column at Bizcommunity.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Click here to read the interview with Vino Govender, the CEO of SA’s new pay-TV operator ODM (the owners of TopTV)

BASIC

150 Top One

Top One is a 24-hour general entertainment channel, bringing brilliant drama series, children’s shows, movies and quality South African classics.

350 Top Gospel

Top Gospel is a Christian lifestyle channel with talk shows, Christian music videos as well as faith based movies. A lot of the content on Top Gospel will be local, keeping it relevant for the community.

351 God TV

GOD TV is a global media ministry founded by South African couple, Rory & Wendy Alec. GOD TV reaches nearly half a billion people, with award youth programming, inspirational and relevant Bible teachings and live Christian events from around the world.

353 Christian Channel

ODM is still finalizing negotiations on a Christian Channel, which shall be named in due course.

352 Inspiration

Inspiration TV has become the fastest growing international Christian network in the world, servicing 118 countries throughout Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Australia and New Zealand. With a unique blend of programming sourced from America and Europe, Inspiration TV offers something for the whole family.

121 Zee Cinema

With the success of the Oscar winning movie Slumdog Millionaire, Bollywood has become a household name. With the most beautiful costume designs, song and dance sequels, gorgeous leading men and ladies and captivating plots, Zee Cinema brings Bollywood movies to our TV screens.

120 Hi Nolly

The Nigerian film industry is fast catching up to Hollywood and Bollywood, with its own particular genre of programming. Hi Nolly features some of the best movies and entertainment from this market.

113 MGM

MGM is a 24 hour movie channel offering the best from Hollywood’s famous Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer library. From Oscar winning favourites and modern masterpieces, to gems from Hollywood’s golden age and cult classics, the MGM Channel is for movie aficionados as well as those who want quality entertainment anytime of the day or night.

400 BBC World

As a world leader in news, BBC World offers 24 hour news and information coverage from around the world. The channel broadcasts a diverse mix of international news, sport, weather, business, current affairs and documentaries. Providing impartial, in-depth analyses of breaking news, BBC World News also looks at the stories behind the issues

405 Fox News

Fox News is rated as one of the more controversial news challenges from the United States. Covering everything from world news and politics, to health and business as well as science & technology, entertainment and sports, Fox News is your one stop channel for news, views and everything else.

410 MSNBC

MSNBC is the leading voice on U.S television and is the fastest growing cable news channel in the United States. MSNBC goes beyond traditional news reporting, giving the viewer informative and up-to-the-minute content.

401 Al Jazeera

Al Jazeera English is the world’s first English language news and current affairs channel with headquarters in the Middle East. With studios in Doha, Kuala Lampur, London and Washington DC, its broadcasts feature current happenings as the world turns.

402 France24

France 24 covers international current events with a French perspective. The channel provides in-depth analyses on current events, with a strong emphasis on culture.

406 Current TV

Current TV features happenings and current affairs, particularly from a youth perspective. Must-viewing for the Y-generation

201 Setanta Africa

Setanta Africa is a 24-hour sports channel which focuses on the ‘beautiful game’. The sports channel covers Arsenal, Aston Villa, Manchester City and Tottenham in its weekly line up, as well as SPL, Russian and Dutch leagues.

220 Eurosport News

With news bulletins updated every 30 minutes, Eurosport News gives you the very latest from the world of sports and business.

160 SABC 1

SABC1 celebrates South Africa’s youth, with honest and positive programming.

161 SABC 2

SABC 2 reflects the multi-faceted nature of the modern South African family, with programming that reflects the country’s diversity.

162 SABC 3

SABC 3 is an adult contemporary channel targeted at LSM 8-10 viewers in the 25 to 49 year age bracket, with programming that aspirational and entertaining.

170 E-TV

e.tv is famous for its free movies and special movie festivals as well as the popular Sunday night movie blockbuster slot.

320 Educational Channel

ODM is finalizing discussions for the supply of an educational channel customized for the South African market. An announcement will be made when talks are concluded.

196 RTPi

RTPi is a general entertainment channel targeting Portuguese speaking communities worldwide.

452 Fashion TV

Fashion TV (FTV) provides glamorous entertainment with emphasis on the latest trends, up and coming models, events, news and glamour.

451 Fine Living Network

FLN is TV’s fun lifestyle network with a fresh lineup of new relationship, wedding, cocktail and competition shows. FLN: It’s entertainment you can use.

520 Music Choice (audio service)

Music Choice is a 24 hour channel audio service featuring music of different genres. From hip-hop and R&B, to classic rock and soul, there’s music for every mood, occasion and age

KIDS AND MUSIC

1. 250. Top Junior

Top Junior provides high quality and creative entertainment for children and the entire family in a highly imaginative, safe and accessible way. Popular shows to look forward to include Maya the Bee, Bumba, Tabaluga and Heidi.

256 Jim Jam

JimJam is a TV channel dedicated to pre-school children aged between 1 – 6 years and their parents. Its high quality programming features some of the world’s best-loved pre-school TV characters, including Thomas & Friends™; Bob the Builder™; Barney™; Angelina Ballerina™ and Fireman Sam™. Trusted, inspiring and engaging, JimJam’s shows have been specifically created to contribute to the emotional, intellectual and social development of children.

257 Baby TV

Babies and parents

Baby TV is the world’s first round-the-clock commercial-free channel for growing infants and toddlers, and their parents. Baby TV is created in collaboration with childhood experts to promote learning, activity, fun, and parent-child interaction.

255 Kidsco

KidsCo is a global TV channel with something for the whole family! The channel targets different age groups through time scheduling. Signature shows include The Wiggles, Sonic the Hedgehog, Inspector Gadget, Sabrina, Dennis the Menace, New Adventures of Madeline and many more.

507 Afro Music

Afro Music is a 24 hour music channel featuring an eclectic mix of artists from across Africa.

506 Nigezie

Nigezie Is a brand new music and lifestyle channel with the main focus being on Nigerian artists, music videos, fashion and entertainment.

225 Fuel

FUEL TV is a 24/7 extreme sports channel featuring base-jumping, skateboarding, snowboarding, surfing, BMX and other death-defying sports.

501 Kiss

Kiss is a 24 hour music channel with a focus on urban and hip-hop music.

502 Kerrang

Kerrang! TV is a 24 hour music channel consisting of hard rock music videos. The channel features themed countdowns like ‘Moshing Anthems’, ‘A-Z of Punk’, ‘Today’s 10 Most Rockin’’ and ‘Metal: 87-07’.

503 Qtv

Qtv is a 24 hour music channel featuring indie bands and music.

504 Magic

Magic TV features easy listening music videos from the 80s and 90s, with a large portion of daytime viewing dedicated to ‘Today’s Magic Hits’.

505 Smash Hits

Smash Hits is a music channel dedicated to popular hits from artists like Madonna, Beyonce and Justin Timberlake.

508 C Music

C Music provides viewers with the world’s finest classical, crossover, cinematic and chill-out music videos 24 hours a day.

509 Classica

Classica is a premium television channel devoted to classical music, opera, ballet and jazz as well as documentaries and interviews.

FAMILY AND KNOWLEDGE

179 Star

Star! Is an entertainment channel covering the glitz and glamour of Tinsel Town. Keep up to date with the latest in movies, celebrities, fashion, awards and Hollywood news on Star!

180 Fox Entertainment

Fox Entertainment is dedicated to the best television series, including The Simpsons, Family Guy, 24, Grey’s Anatomy, Criminal Minds and Boston Legal.

181 Fox Retro

Fox Retro is an entertainment channel dedicated to the most popular series that defined the 70s, 80s and 90s, which helped shape the pop culture and trends of today.

310 Natura

Natura is a 24 hour high quality documentary channel featuring documentaries from the world’s best directors and producers.

190 BET

Black Entertainment Television’ features the very best from African-American entertainers with series, talk-shows, sitcoms and interviews.

301 Top History

Top History is a 24 hour channel that offers the most memorable moments in history, with programming which includes South Africa and Africa.

303 Discovery ID

Investigation Discovery (ID) is the brand new channel from Discovery featuring the stories behind crime forensics and criminal investigations.

453 Discovery Travel & Living

Discovery Travel & Living explores the most fascinating and inspiring places on earth. The channel takes viewers to exotic and far-flung destinations.

302 Discovery Science

Discovery Science is a documentary channel focusing on programmes dealing with scientific and technological issues

Top Crime is a 24 hour entertainment channel with a focus on crime drama and suspense programmes.

300 Top Explore

Top Explore is a 24 hour channel which allows viewers the opportunity to explore the secrets and wonders of the world. Featuring strong stories, interesting people and high quality visuals.

PREMIUM

112 Silver

Silver is a 24 hour movie channel with movies sourced from independent suppliers in the US, Europe and other parts of the world.

111 Showtime

Showtime is as 24 hour action channel with blockbuster titles covering action, horror and sci-fi.

110 Fox FX

Fox FX is quality television for men. With a mix of quality, character-driven and often unconventional drama and comedy, it has a strong resonance with male audiences.

100 Top Movies

Top Movies is one of Top TV’s flagship channels. A 24 hour premium movie channel with recently released blockbuster titles and other award-winning movies.

101 Top Movies 2

Top Movies 2 is Top Movies time shifted by 2 hours. If you miss your favourite movie catch it 2 hours later on Top Movies 2.  

102 Top Movies 24

Top Movies 24 is time shifted by 24 hours. The channel gives the viewer the opportunity to catch up on Top Movies from the previous day.

200 Top Sport

Top Sport is a premium sports channel featuring sports preferred by SA audiences. It will bring South Africans the best of local and international sport as well as the latest sporting news

Popularity: 23% [?]

Last week South African consumers got two pieces of heartening news – first that MWEB is launching uncapped broadband packages and secondly that On Digital Media (ODM) is set to enter the SA market as the second pay-TV operator in May. ODM’s TopTV is not going to head to head with MultiChoice’s DStv as it’s targeting a lower income group – their research has identified 5.5m South Africans who are stuck with e.tv and the SABC channels – who may well be itching to cough up between R99 and R249 for the ODM offering. Wisely, ODM has incorporated a strong Christian element among their channels that may just hit the spot with the God-fearing people of South Africa’s lower middle class. But TopTV launch is good news for all consumers: the spectre of competition will probably means that MultiChoice will respond with beefed-up cheaper bouquets. (Incidentally – or possibly not so incidentally – MultiChoice shares parent company Naspers  with MWEB.)  I spoke to Vino Govender, CEO of ODM, about the company’s strategy.

GILL MOODIE: I think that because in SA, we’ve only had one pay-TV operator for so long, there’s a lot about pay-TV broadcasting with which we are not familiar. I know ODM has said that it won’t be showing the same channels as DStv. Is that because MultiChoice has exclusive rights to a lot of content?

VINO GOVENDER: Not all of it… it depends. In some instances, they have exclusivity. Generally, the news channels like BBC World do not give any broadcaster exclusivity.

QUESTION: It was reported in Business Times last week that TopTV is going to have 50 channels and nine channels will be aggregated locally. What does “aggregating” mean in broadcasting?

ANSWER: It means that we buy both local and international channels and we aggregate them, in other words, we pack and put those channels together in our local office. Let’s take the example of (DStv’s) M-Net. M-Net is made up of a whole lot of different programmes. We will do precisely the same thing. We go to different content providers and buy certain movies and certain series, etc, and we also buy local programming … and put that channel together by ourselves and it becomes our own branded channel going forward in the future.

QUESTION: The process of pulling this whole thing together over the past four years must have been a huge learning curve.

ANSWER: Absolutely. There’s no book out there called “How to Start your Own Pay-TV Business” but I think we’ve risen to the challenge…

QUESTION: And pay-TV is an expensive business.

ANSWER: It is quite a cash-hungry business but it also produces very good returns once you grow your subscriber base.

QUESTION: Yes, you can see that in MultiChoice’s results. (In the year to June 2009, MultiChoice SA reported that it had signed 450 000 new customers to lift the total to 2.4m and grew revenue by 38% to R8.9bn while net profit rose 25% to R1.9bn.) But you’re-entering a market in which MultiChoice has had the monopoly for years. Marcel Golding (the CEO of e.tv) said he believed there was room for only two pay-TV operators when sister company E.sat relinquished its pay-TV licence to launch the 24-hour e.news service. What’s your view on what Golding said?

ANSWER: I share his view – that there’s space for only two paid platforms to survive well in this market. Any further entries by other operators – specifically on a satellite platform – will dilute market share and make it very difficult for operators to survive… TO READ THE FULL INTERVIEW WITH VINO GOVENDER, CLICK HERE TO GO TO MONEYWEB

Click here to see what channels TopTV is offering.

Popularity: 24% [?]

A move by the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa) to regulate the highly lucrative business of sports broadcasting rights came closer to policy last week as the deadline for submission on Icasa’s “preliminary findings and conclusions” closed on Friday.

The arena for this battle – and don’t let anyone tell you that it isn’t a battle – has been Icasa and though the submissions to the regulator from the public and stakeholders are as dry as toast, blood pressure is up on all sides. The money is big and the stakes are high.

On the one hand, there is the government’s determination not to allow pay-TV operations to acquire exclusive rights to broadcast national sporting events that all South Africans should be able to watch and enjoy – and, crucially, for children on all backgrounds to be inspired to grow up to be national sporting heroes.

There are also the national sports bodies, which rely on money from broadcast rights for an average 60% of their revenue. Internationally, sports bodies’ revenue comes from – in descending order of importance – broadcasting rights, sponsorships, ticket sales, merchandising and government subsidies and grants, according to Amanda Armstrong, a director and law specialist in telecommunications and broadcasting at Werksmans Attorneys. In South Africa, the government’s contribution was less than 1% of the annual revenue of most sports bodies in 2008.

There are the free-to-air channels, e.tv and the SABC, for which there are obvious commercial gains – both in terms of audience and advertising – if they can get the first option to bid without competition from pay-TV operations for more live sport. SABC and e.tv say – a tad sanctimoniously – in their Icasa submissions that the “… the broadcast of key sporting events on pay-TV has a negative impact on the participation of many South Africans in sport and could undermine the transformation in sport”. But free-to-air channels can often struggle to find air space to broadcast live events amid their local content programming. It’s worth noting, for instance, that the tripartite agreement between the PSL, SuperSport and the SABC (struck after SuperSport snapped up the exclusive rights in 2007 for the PSL from SABC), the public broadcaster was in fact required to broadcast more games than it did in the previous season when it held all the PSL rights.

The last players in this drama are the pay-TV operators such as DStv’s SuperSport as well as the new guys on the block, ODM and Super 5 Media, which are expected to launch this year. SuperSport, which coughed up about R2bn for the exclusive broadcast rights of PSL soccer games over five years, is hugely concerned about the current Icasa review. Chiefly, the problem is that there’s no point is spending large sums of money if you can’t get them exclusively… TO READ THE FULL COLUMN, CLICK HERE TO GO TO MONEYWEB.

Popularity: 11% [?]

The subscription model has come up trumps as a bulwark against the recession, especially if you’re selling pay-TV, as Naspers has happily discovered and they’re not the only ones. Worldwide, media companies that own pay-TV operations are finding that in the words of a recent story from The Economist in these straightened times, most people would sooner unplug the fridge than the decoder.

BSkyB in Britain, reports The Economist, grew subscribers in the year to June 30, squeezed more revenue from each customer and reported more profit than the year before. In the US, Discovery Communications, the owner of the channels, such as Discovery Channel and Animal Planet, reported a 13% rise in profit in the second quarter of 2009. And Viacom, owners of Paramount Pictures and MTV, is even launching a new cable TV channel called Epix to take on the likes of HBO.

There’s no rocket science here. In a recession, most of us stay at home more and content ourselves with quaffing a glass or two of bargain basement Tall Horse on the couch while catching our favourite show. So much of how we respond to economic conditions is about acquiring new habits. In good times, we get used to spending merrily; in the bad times we get used to not spending and many buys that were previously a delight now seem wasteful…TO READ MY FULL MONEYWEB COLUMN THAT GOES OUT EVERY  MONDAY, CLICK HERE.

Popularity: 8% [?]