It's been just over six months since The Bold and the Beautiful was
yanked from SABC3 and now it's back - but not in a place we imagined at the time of its yankage.
e.tv or OpenView seemed the most likely candidate but no, it's Vodacom who loves Brooke Logan most because they've bought the South African rights to Bold for their VOD streaming service Video Play.
"What's that!?" We hear you ask.
Exactly. Clearly the purchase of Bold is a move to get eyeballs onto the service, with the ambition of upselling viewers on the rest of the service.
Bold went live on the site on Wednesday (9 October) and according to a press release by Vodacom, they're going to stream 50 catch-up episodes (from where SABC3 left off), as well as the next season, Season 31.
There's no subscription for them so they're free, unless you include the data costs to stream them. Of course Vodacom will be hoping that viewers use their Video Play data packages to watch - like Cell C's done with Black - but you don't have to use these, you can watch via any data/fibre service.
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Added on 11 October 2019
BUT you can't use Video Play if you don't have a Vodacom number. This isn't clarified by Vodacom in the press release about the service. More about this in our reply below this article.
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Here's a link to the site:
Video Play
This move by Vodacom makes it the second streamer to use the popularity of soapies to attract subscribers.
VIU honed in on South African soapies in February this year, resulting in the SABC and e.tv migrating many of their top performers from YouTube to VIU.
And now there's a "situation".
The contract between VIU and Skeem Saam expired last month and Skeem Saam suddenly disappeared from VIU. At first it was nowhere to found and now it's back
on YouTube.
We've been investigating what's going on and discovered that that there are sweaty negotiations going on behind-the-scenes between VIU and the SABC. VIU wants to keep Skeem Saam and surprise-surprise, the SABC doesn't know what they want to do.
No final decisions or contracts on this have been signed yet so things are up in the air. Or rather, up in cyberspace, which has become the new battleground to win viewers.