The MultiChoice/Openview scrum for Rugby World Cup coverage continued this week with two developments:
1. eMedia announced that they're
launching a complaint with the Competition Commission about MultiChoice's sub-licencing stipulation that prohibits the SABC from airing Rugby World Cup games on the SABC channels on Openview.
2. News articles reported that eMedia has withdrawn its High Court case against MultiChoice.
The eyebrow-raiser about some of these articles is that they were essentially gossip pieces because they reported this through the voice of MultiChoice statements, reporting on what Openview has done without confirming this with eMedia or getting their perspective.
We contacted eMedia to find out whether the grapevine is true and stumbled on their Corporate Communications Manager Bennum Van Jaarsveld who was pulling his hair out in huge chunks of rage, with deep guttural roars, flanked by cauliflower rugby ears.
Okay, we're exaggerating but you get the idea.
He went on to give us comment on the court case and outlined eMedia's argument for the prosecution.
Put your jury glasses on and see what you think... this is what he told us:
Bennum: We are still pursuing the case, for now though, we've withdrawn the High Court case, and we are focusing on the case with the Competition Commission.
Because there were two, the attorneys advised to focus on one - deal with that, and then we'll move on to the next basically. So we're not giving up on it, we will relaunch it. The case definitely still has a lot of merit.
I see MultiChoice is saying a lot of things, which is really quite damaging and also just very arrogant, to be honest, but the whole argument does make sense from our side.
And that is that anybody who is accessing SABC2 or SABC - whether they do that via Openview, DStv, the old analogue system with TV aerials or antennas, which is coming to an end - must have the same content.
So, why discriminate against viewers that are on the Openview platform by not allowing them to see the full SABC content?
And that's basically the argument, that it's anti-competitive and unfair to viewers, because the analogue system is being switched off so government is forcing viewers onto a digital, migrated, platform - but you're not giving them any choice.
MultiChoice keep saying that we should have bought the rights if we wanted it, but that is not the point.
And also, they keep saying we want a free ride - there's no free ride, because we don't get any revenue from the SABC channels that are on the Openview platform. All that revenue goes straight back to the SABC. We don't make anything off it.
It's kind of a courtesy to have them on the platform because of the carriage agreement.
For now, we've withdrawn and are focusing on the Competition Commission case - that's going ahead full steam and when the time is right and when we're ready - and depending on the outcome of that, we'll then relaunch or reapply.