Friday, December 31, 2010

Here's some of what's waiting for South African television in 2011 in the year to come.


You're just reading it here.

2011 for South African television will bring many surprises, but here's some of what will definitely happen:

M-Net will be turning 25 years old and the South African pay broadcaster will celebrate its 25th anniversary in October 2011. Hopefully M-Net has the foresight to do something like this.

In 2011 MultiChoice will launch a few more TV channels on its DStv bouquet with its last available bandwidth before the pay TV platform acquires more satellilte space that becomes available in 2012. The first new TV channel on DStv in 2011 will be Sony Max (DStv 126) from February 2011.

Piers Morgan Tonight will debut on 18 January 2011 on CNN International (DStv 401), replacing Larry King Live.

2011 will see the final season of Smallville after a decade. Other noteworthy TV shows coming to an end in 2011 include Hannah Montana, Stargate Universe, The Closer and Law & Order: Criminal Intent.

M-Net's new soap, currently with the working title Landmark will debut on 4 April 2011 at 18:00 with Connie Ferguson, Shona Ferguson and Tumisho Masha. The pay operator also has Survivor SA Maldives from February 2011 and possibly, The X Factor.

e.tv will embark on another season of Popstars from early in 2011.

MultiChoice is set to introduce Box Office in 2011, its pay-to-view movie service as an extended roll-out of its current DStv on Demand service introduced in 2010.

The world will be watching the wedding live on television of Prince William and Kate Middleton on 29 April 2011 across the globe.

At launch On Digital Media (ODM) promised that several new channels would be added six months later during October 2010 to its TopTV service but broke its promise. In a new promise with little credibility TopTV now promises new channels by February 2011, including a sport channel and later in 2011 the TopTV PVR decoder. 

SABC3 has plans to relaunch its longrunning local talk show 3Talk with Noeleen later in 2011 - currently set for April 2011 - after its been pushed out multiple times and was supposed to happen with its 7th anniversary in 2010.

With the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN) set to start in January in America, could OWN show op on TopTV in 2011? The Oprah Winfrey Show's 25th and final season will end in 2011, with SABC3 trying to show the end at the same time in South Africa as in America.

The SABC with its twin towers will run out of money by September 2011, in an ironic ''September eleven'' kind of way. Although government say it won't bail out the beleaguered South African broadcaster again, it seems another/extended government guaranteed loan is the only way.

The SABC will get 4 new SABC board members that won't come without political jostling and drama.

The South African government will finally approve (although it officially did so, and then raised eyebrows by suddenly backtracking) a new digital terrestrial television (DTT) standard for South Africa in 2011 in the switchover to digital migration. Lets hope its DVB-T.