That's it folks, the show's over for the BBC/ITV streamer BritBox in South Africa, three years after it launched here.
The platform announced its closure on Monday 20 May and has since gone on to give a thorough and most in-depth explanation as to why it's shutting down.
NOT.
The only explanation they give is as follows:
BritBox has made the decision to discontinue its service in South Africa to focus on the strategic priorities of the brand.
The decision to leave South Africa was made after careful consideration of various factors, including market dynamics and strategic business objectives.
The usual corporate speak, best personified by Manuel's words in Fawlty Towers when he famously declared "I know naaaathing."
No-one shuts down because they're doing so well and therefore we can only assume the BritBox exit is because of the mayhem surrounding streamers.
It's become a saturated market with dispersed, divided audiences who are leaping from one streaming service to the next once they discover that there aren't enough shows on each of them to stay loyal to one.
Disney+, Hulu and Max have tried to deal with this problem in the US recently by launching bundled streaming packages with all three included.
DStv also tried to partially address it by including access to various streamers via the Explora Ultra and Streama devices. BritBox is on those and it didn't work because DStv subscribers have to pay extra for the access and clearly didn't want to. Or they did and found it wasn't worth it
or too few people have those devices for it to have made an impact.
And Netflix churns out hit and miss shows with a mix of good and poor quality series as the pressure to deliver more and more mounts. They've also resorted to producing the same stories in different countries in different languages, a sign that there aren't enough stories to go around.
The whole landscape seems to have become dominated by studio deals, licences, undisclosed viewership numbers and which platform gets the territory rights to which properties instead of being about pure entertainment for treasured audiences.
Where will these trends end up and who will survive it? And what date will BritBox be history in South Africa?
It closes on 30 August 2024.
We've enquired about how the moolah situation will work and BritBox tells us that annual subscribers will receive a pro-rata refund for the impacted months which will be paid to their original payment method.
Regarding monthly subscriptions, here's an explanation of how it will work:
Customers’ final payment will occur on their regular billing date in the month preceding the closure, which is no later than August 30, 2024.
The service will not auto-renew, and their last day for viewing will coincide with the end of that billing cycle.
And a link to their FAQs about it:
Understanding the BritBox South Africa Service Closure: FAQs