CAPE TOWN, South Africa — South African satellite pay TV broadcaster TopTV has confirmed that Playboy TV will supply content for its three planned adult channels.
Earlier this week TopTV slammed Porn Satellite TV (PSat.tv) for claiming TopTV would be carrying its porn content using TopTV's satellite dish and quickly announced its own adult intentions.
It remains unclear as to how PSat — run by African Satellite Installations (ASI) — will be broadcast, either independently or as part of TopTV's boquet of adult offerings.
But according to a MyBroadband report, On Digital Media, operator of TopTV, yesterday applied to the South African Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA) regulator for the three Playboy TV channels.
TopTV said in a a statement, “As a pay-tv broadcaster, TopTV is in the business of distributing content which includes TopTV aggregated channels as well as 3rd party channels via carriage agreements. In mid 2011, we were approached by Playboy TV who had three adult video channels on offer. We weighed the pros and cons of adding these to our bouquet. TopTV has recently concluded an agreement with Playboy TV whereby TopTV will provide carriage for three Playboy Channels in the near future. We also considered past requests for adult content onto our bouquet. We then commissioned research over and above results that we had from research conducted elsewhere. All these inputs were considered in our decision to add the channels.”
The company stressed that the content will be offered as stand-alone packages and be encrypted with a separate PIN code to prevent exposure to subscribers who do not want adult content and will provide parental controls.
In explaining its move to add adult content, TopTV said in part that as a business it needs to address the desires of its existing and future client base and it will always aim to balance all competing interests.
“In a democratic society founded on a sound constitution, all individuals need to provide the requisite space for co-existence with other sectors of the society that may be different from each other. In that light, we do not see the provision of adult content as a compromise of our company image. Rather, it is a bold move fundamentally based on our constitution in a society which enshrines freedom of expression in its bill of rights.
“We have devised a unique approach to the subject matter. We are of course very mindful of the fact that there are those who will be opposed to such content. However, as a subscription broadcaster catering for various niche audiences, we need to accommodate as many interests as possible. That’s why we have driving/cooking/music shows and many other genres of programming.
Playboy was contacted by XBIZ but was unavailable for comment at post time.
