Openview has been dominating the South African market for several years giving companies like MultiChoice a run for their money particularly for those residing on lower bouquets such as DStv Easyview as the once underachieving platform is about to go through some changes.
MultiChoice will be adding two new entertainment channels to the bouquet in the month of November, Magic Showcase and CineMagic which just helps build onto the number of alternatives in South Africa.
Openview offers less channels but they have managed to win a lot of audiences with the selection of sports, local dramas, international series, kids shows and movies. Now it appears as if MultiChoice has begun catching up to the free-to-view platform.
DStv Easyview only offered 1 movie channel TNT which has been having a bit of its ups and downs with the likes of Blade, I Know What You Did Last Summer, Final Destination, Anaconda and so forth. If it was for TNT Original Movies and All Elite Wrestling I don't how far the channel could have gotten.
Point is, TNT was at a disadvantage as Openview provided two movie channels eMovies and eMovies Extra which were able to juggle around a mix of emotions. eMovies had Pokémon, Mama Jack and Oh Schuks while eMovies Extra had Fast And Furious, Transporter and Rush Hour.
With the inclusion of CineMagic, I'm not expecting them to read each other's mind or become the sibling duo as these two fall under different grounds so the only thing that anyone should be excited about is the number of options available.
CineMagic is set to feature a mix of local and international films 18 hours a day leaving TNT to the remaining 6 hours. Although, a schedule hasn't been provided my guess would be the content is based from M-Net Movies and Mzansi Bioskop.
Over to the winners which there's none, you got to look at the benefits to the above brands to reach your conclusion. eMovies is very selective I guess that's what made them favourable on DStv, TNT has got All Elite Wrestling and CineMagic by my hunch has the local productions.