DStv is about to change what South Africans pay for entertainment

For years, choosing a DStv package largely meant deciding how far up one enormous ladder you could afford to climb.

That changes on Thursday.

What landed

From 17 September, DStv begins moving South African customers onto a redesigned package structure that separates some of its strongest entertainment and sports offerings rather than reserving almost everything desirable for increasingly expensive upper tiers.

The entry-level streaming package, Starter, begins at R99 a month. Select starts at R299, Sports at R399, Movies & Series at R500 and Premium at R799 on streaming.

Satellite pricing differs on some packages.

The interesting change for the entertainment business isn't simply that the names are different.

It's M-Net.

The channel that spent decades functioning as one of DStv Premium's defining privileges is included in the new Movies & Series package. DStv says the package will carry more than 115 channels, including Mzansi Magic, kykNET, Discovery Channel and BBC Earth alongside the M-Net movie channels.

Sport is being pulled in another direction. The R399 Sports package includes Premier League and UEFA football, PSL coverage, cricket and other sports programming, while some premium rights remain higher up the ladder.

That creates something DStv historically resisted: a clearer choice between customers primarily paying for scripted entertainment and those primarily paying for sport.

The timing isn't accidental.

MultiChoice is now part of Canal+, Showmax was closed earlier this year after the group said its annual losses had become unsustainable, and South African households have become accustomed to switching streaming subscriptions on and off rather than treating television as a permanent monthly utility.

DStv is effectively trying to make the bundle behave a little more like the market that has been eating into it.

There is another important consequence for local entertainment.

Making channels such as M-Net and Mzansi Magic accessible through more deliberately structured packages potentially changes the size and composition of the audience available to locally commissioned programmes.

That matters to producers.

Commissioning budgets ultimately live downstream from subscriber numbers, advertising, audience performance and the broadcaster's confidence that expensive local programming can keep people paying.

The company is also reducing duplication in its channel structure. Some channels will close or be consolidated while new services enter the packages.

Existing Access, Family and Compact customers are being migrated to Starter, Select and Sports respectively. Premium, Compact Plus and EasyView customers remain on their current packages unless they elect to move, although Compact Plus is no longer being sold to new subscribers.

There will be plenty of debate over whether individual subscribers are actually getting a better deal.

That's worth doing once customers can see the final channel combinations on Thursday.

But the bigger entertainment-industry story is already visible.

DStv has spent years defending the traditional television bundle.

What is still open

Now it is breaking that bundle apart itself.