MultiChoice Group’s deadlock with Warner Bros Discovery – and the real possibility that a dozen channels, many of them household names, will vanish from DStv’s line-up on 1 January – is more than another content dispute.
It is a moment that exposes an uncomfortable truth about the company’s direction under its new French owners, Canal+: cost discipline is the new religion.
And it’s happening because MultiChoice is running out of time.
Subscriber numbers have been falling for years across most tiers, notably in the more profitable Premium segment. The middle class is under pressure, households are cutting back and younger viewers have migrated to streaming alternatives. The old DStv economics are looking less and less sustainable.
But as cost control tightens, the thing most at risk is not the Discovery Channel or CNN. It’s the fragile trust between DStv and its subscribers.
Let’s be blunt here: Canal+ did not spend billions acquiring MultiChoice to preserve a bloated legacy channel structure. It bought it because it sees an opportunity to consolidate Africa’s pay-television landscape, extract efficiencies and build a platform that competes in a world where Netflix, YouTube and other streamers dominate.
Content costs are the biggest line item in a pay-TV operator’s budget. And Warner Bros Discovery is no doubt among the most aggressive negotiators in the global entertainment industry. In any negotiation where both sides dig in, the new Canal+-led MultiChoice was always more likely to walk away from an expensive renewal than the old South African-run MultiChoice ever would have.
Trust
Canal+ knows that unless MultiChoice reduces its costs, the business could become structurally unviable. Yet DStv must also become more affordable, not more luxurious, if it’s to regain the subscribers who have gone elsewhere. The problem is that subscribers experience an aggressive cost-cutting strategy as shrinking value.
Even if the economics make sense, viewers don’t see the spreadsheets informing management’s decisions. Rather, they see a service that asks them to pay more while giving them less. And that perception erodes trust.
DStv once operated on a different plane entirely. If you were a subscriber, you were covered. That was the deal. You paid a premium, but you got it all: the sports, the documentary channels, the kids’ channels, the lifestyle content and news from around the world. It was stable, predictable and full. The risk is that viewers will regard the withdrawal of 12 Warner Bros’ channels as a downgrade in disguise.
Read: Channel blackout looms at DStv as Warner Bros talks hit deadlock
MultiChoice has survived channel exits before. This one feels different, though, because several of the channels involved are big names. CNN, for example, is synonymous with major world events.
Objectively, the French strategy is rational. If MultiChoice wants to survive the next decade, it must become a leaner, more efficient business. Canal+ understands that. The problem is not the strategy. The problem is how it lands with customers.
Subscribers don’t want to hear about cost pressures. They want reassurance. They want transparency. They want to know why value is being taken away and what is being added in return.
This is where Canal+ must tread carefully. Because while channels can be replaced, trust cannot. If MultiChoice continues to remove channels without a corresponding strategy to offer alternatives or soften the blow, it risks breaking an unwritten contract with its customers: that their monthly subscription fee will give them a full slate of great content.
DStv can survive losing Discovery Channel. It can survive losing CNN. But it must be careful to avoid the perception that it’s stripping the service down without caring about the people who remain loyal to it.
Read: Canal+ moves to stem slide in DStv subscribers
To turn the business around, DStv must become more affordable. To remain viable, it must reduce its costs further. To maintain relevance, it must adapt. But to stop haemorrhaging subscribers, it must rebuild – not deplete – trust with its customers. That will be the real test for MultiChoice and its new owner in the years ahead. – © 2025 NewsCentral Media
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