The Box: '7de Laan' Fans Start Online Petition to Save Show Following Announced Cancellation
7de Laan - SABC 1
Africa: MultiChoice will rebrand its DStv app as DStv Stream for unknown reasons. The reasons for the latest branding changes are unclear and will occur before MultiChoice launches its Showmax video streaming service at the end of 2023.
M-Net (DStv 101) has named its year-at-the-seaside series from Red Letter Day Productions set in Simon's Town as Summertide with the 52-episode drama, which will debut on January 2024. The local production from Corné and René van Rooyen follows a widowed marine biologist with two children who relocates to Simon's Town in the Western Cape province to start a penguin rehabilitation center. Red Letter Day Productions haven't yet announced any casting.
Following the SABC's shocking cancellation of 7de Laan on SABC2, viewers have started an online petition to save the show. The petitions had close to 25,000 signatures. The final episode of 7de Laan is set to be released on 26 December. The SABC gave the crew and cast of the Danie Odendaal Productions show the news with the public broadcaster saying that the show is too expensive to keep on the air. There's a possibility of some characters who might return to 7de Laan as the series now builds up to its finale.
Netflix viewership may be down significantly from last year overall. Still, its local language productions have been humming along nicely, mainly since the Writers Guild of America strike started in May. The streaming service started aggressively surfacing international programming options for viewers in its largest market. In the past seven weeks, the U.S.Next TV found viewership of the platform’s top non-English TV series titles soared by 30% year over year. For foreign-language films, the total hours viewed increased by around 20%.
The Walt Disney Company Africa is launching a limited mobile plan with MTN for Disney+ in South Africa at R49 per month including 500MB of free data for streaming. The promotion follows Vodacom's partnership with Amazon Prime Video and the power grabs from Netflix and Apple TV+ in the African region. MultiChoice is also set to relaunch its Showmax in partnership with Comcast's NBCUniversal.
Asia: The Mask Girl will release on August 18th. The series is written and directed by Kim Yong-Hoo and will star Ko Hyun-jang, Nana, a yet-to-be-revealed newcomer, Ahn Jae-hong and Yeom Hye-ran. The series is described as a female-led mystery thriller of an office worker/secret masked online model that is captured and must plot her escape.
ZEE5 Global, a streaming platform focusing on South Asian content, has grown 35% year-on-year in viewership among its target audience in the U.S. With the genres of drama, comedy, and thrillers all seeing a significant increase along with theatrical releases.
Southeast Asia only added 7,000 net new SVOD subscriptions in the first half of 2023, a big slowdown from 7 million new subscribers in the second half of last year. The service now fights with Netflix, Prime Video, Viu, and TikTok for subscriptions and watch time on their platform.
Europe: Revenues in the U.K. streaming sector soared 21.5% year-on-year to £3.3 billion ($4.1 billion) from 2022. The growth was driven by price rises by Netflix and Amazon with overall growth in subscriptions with the four largest services, Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+, and Sky’s Now, taking a 93% market share. Of these, Netflix accounted for £1.61 billion, Prime Video £778 million, Disney+ £383 million, and Now £253 million.
With no resolution yet with the WGA and SAG strike the streaming giant Netflix is in a favorable position as it churns out content from its international branches operating outside the guild's jurisdiction. Hoping to use the momentum from international film and TV Netflix to fill in gaps of US-based productions.
Latin America: TelevisaUnivision is anticipating gains and even rate hikes amidst TV and streaming weakening. According to media buyers and other executives, advertisers have called for rollbacks with sports as the only category notching positive gains. The ongoing strike by writers and actors had “zero impact” on TelevisaUnivision, as most of its production occurs in Mexico.
