Siyaya, a 100% black-owned media consortium whose major shareholder is the Bakgatla Ba Kgafela tribe in the North-West province, has applied for a pay-television licence to offer African and South African content, along with football, all for monthly subscription rates starting from R70.

The consortium wants a licence to offer the service on the digital terrestrial television (DTT) platform, which South Africa should launch either this year or in 2014.

Post office chairman Vuyo Mahlati chairs Siyaya’s board and Thandi Ramathesele, a former SABC manager, is its CEO. Siyaya is managed by My Television, headed by Aubrey Tau, which has been running a DTT trial in North-West. The Bakgatla community has been responsible for managing the My Television DTT trial and is training rural youngsters for the broadcasting sector.

The consortium says it will create jobs through local content creation, the local assembly of the set-top boxes needed to receive DTT, local call centre staff, and support for citizen journalism and user-generated content.

Soccer will be a key component of Siyaya’s offering, along with an extensive library of video-on-demand content and facilities for storing 100 hours of content on a personal video recorder.

Siyaya will target black South Africans with an average age of 30 and a monthly household income of between R4 000 and R10 000, a potential market of a million viewers, it says.

It argues than in addition to sporting content, there is enormous demand in this segment for local content. In addition to offering international soccer events, Siyaya intends screening club matches from Southern Africa in a league created by the Council of Southern Africa Football Associations.

The majority of Siyaya’s content will be acquired via bulk commissioning to drive down costs and encourage sustainability for local producers. It also intends procuring content from rural communities to “expand the knowledge economy”.

Siyaya will source 30% of its content from open commissions, 50% from closed tenders — the bulk commissioning it speaks of — and 20% will be “ringfenced” for new entrants.

The consortium claims already to have agreements with content suppliers such as Showtime, Zuku, National Geographic, Warner Brothers, Fox, AMC Networks and Sony Entertainment.

Aside from its competitive monthly subscription of R70, Siyaya is promising consumers “affordable” set-top boxes.

It says it expects to be profitable in its fourth year of operation and anticipates having 300 000 subscribers by that point.

Tau says the consortium is “not here to reinvent TV” and nor does it plan to invest “R1,5bn in a new service” because for that sort of money it could “just buy e.tv”.

“Our budget is very conservative because if we are going to target the lower end of the market, our costs must be low,” Tau adds. “We are going to start small, knowing there are a lot of soccer properties around the world we can add to the service and grow from strength to strength.”

He says Siyaya, if it is licensed, will run on a “low-cost operation model” because it has “learnt its lesson from other players in the market”.

Though Siyaya is shareholder funded, Tau says that if the consortium needs more funding it already has a partnership in place with Sasfin Bank.

Speaking for Siyaya, television talk show host Dali Tambo — one of Siyaya’s shareholders — says the consortium has been preparing to apply for a licence since 2009. “We’re willing, we’re ready and we’re able. We have content agreements in place, technology and infrastructure partnerships in place, a sustainable business plan and a competent management who cover the broad spectrum of TV.”

Tambo says Siyaya plans to “transform the broadcast industry in a meaningful way” and “give a voice to the rural voiceless while engaging in skills transfers with them”.

“The youth of today are not the youth we were. They’re not prepared to accept the channels their parents did,” Tambo says. “They want choice, affordability and relevance.”

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