Collin Mashile, chief director of broadcasting policy, said:"Everything that they show to South Africans in terms of their catalogue, 30% of that catalogue must include South African content."
Forcing streamers to have a third of their content be local South African series and films will likely end up hurting consumers by taking away choice if these streamers, in order to comply, instead decide to downsize instead of upsize their overall ringfences offering for South Africa to comply. Forcing video streaming services to make their offering 30% local will, however, have unintended consequences for the South African consumer that only becomes clear when you know how these streamers operate and how they make money.1. Catalogue downsizing instead of upsizing is bad for consumers
That is beside the large back-catalogue of local South African content. A streamer like Netflix would have to suddenly find and acquire even if this volume of content were to be available. The overall Netflix South Africa content catalogue is already smaller than other countries, like the United States, for instance, because of licensing rights and existing licensing restrictions for the territory. If Netflix SA, for example, had 1000 titles and must carry 30% local content, it's not going to switch out and add or make 333 titles be local. It will much more likely reduce the overall 1000 availability to 300 so that it now only needs 100 local shows to make the percentage.
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