Whoa! The SABC enters uncharted online territory this March in a massive move away from YouTube.
From 1 March 2019, Uzalo and Skeem Saam will be off YouTube, where they've been racking up hundreds of thousands of views per episode, and will only be available on new streaming service Viu, which officially launches on the same day.
The SABC and Viu have entered an exclusivity sub-licensing agreement which means that Viu has exclusive online rights to various SABC shows.
According to the SABC’s Group Chief Executive Officer Madoda Mxakwe: "This strongly aligns with our strategic objective to identify new revenue streams and, in this particular case, increasing revenue through sub-licensing SABC’s owned Intellectual Property (IP), specifically in the video entertainment space."
Before you freak out as we did... Viu's South African PR agency The Communications Firm has confirmed to TVSA that Uzalo and Skeem Saam will remain free to watch online as it is on YouTube so you won't have to pay a subscription to see them once Viu launches officially.
The Premium subscription is going to cost R69 a month or R20 a week or R5 a day and some South African content will be behind the pay wall while other content won't be.
It would be suicide for them to put shows like Uzalo and Skeem Saam behind a pay wall and we're very relieved that they clearly know this.
In essence they look set to become the SABC's video streaming/catch up service so we're wondering what's happening with Generations: The Legacy and other popular SABC soapies - we'll to snoop to find out.
As for Viu... who are they? They're owned by PCCW Media, a division of the Hong Kong-based IT company PCCW Limited, and Vuclip, a video-on-demand service for emerging markets.
Interesting to note is that PCCW was at the helm of the failed South African video on demand service ONTAPtv which launched in 2015 and then disappeared. Their hook-up with the SABC could result in a different outcome this time round -
if they do things right.
According to the Viu website, they're available in 12 other countries besides South Africa, including Malaysia and India, which means that the majority of their current programming is Asian.
They'll be increasing their South African content once they launch with titles including Yizo Yizo, Single Galz and The Sobre Companion and will also have more Pan African content including Nollywood titles.
Here's a link to the site which has Uzalo and Skeem Saam episodes loaded:
www.viu.com
You'll see that you can watch each video in different resolutions and can also download episodes to watch later.
You'll also see that they have the
Uzalo episode numbering wrong too! The SABC hasn't changed it on their YouTube channel so the episode numbers are still an episode ahead of what they should be.
Here's a link to the FAQs on the Viu site which includes info. on the platforms you can watch on, the App etc.:
FAQs
Once you've given it a try let us know what you think. Does it stack up to YouTube? Will you be happy watching on a platform that isn't YouTube? Hit us up with your thoughts!