Friday 21 September 2012

DSTV / EWTN: Letter To Multichoice CEO



Below is the letter that was addressed to the Chief Executive Officer of Multichoice on 27 July 2012.  To date I have had no response of any kind whatsoever to this letter.  I had hoped that Multichoice would simply do the right thing and take the next logical step, which is to turn on EWTN for all.  

It seems that instead Multichoice is going to apply the typical corporate bully boy tactic. They're going to prove they're bigger and more powerful than the consumer. Multichoice will turn off EWTN for everyone in Africa.  

How utterly petty of Multichoice!


Here Is My Letter To The CEO


Mark Nel

P.O. Box 2458, Bedfordview, 2008
Gauteng, South Africa


27 July 2012

Chief Executive Officer
Multichoice
P.O. Box 1502
Randburg
2125

Dear Sir or Madam,

I, and others, have previously written to your company regarding
the fact that EWTN (Eternal Word Television Network), a Catholic
Satellite Television network, is available to your viewers
outside of South Africa on DSTV channel 348. This Catholic
network is however not available to your South African viewers,
despite numerous requests that it be made available.

In addition, your company has informed us in writing that some of
your viewers in South Africa are in fact able to view this
channel by manually tuning their decoders, if they have the right
decoder, to receive this channel. Those of us with decoders like
the HD PVR are unable to do so even though we subscribe to your
premium bouquet.

The South African constitution provides that “No person shall be
unfairly discriminated against, directly or indirectly, and,
without derogating from the generality of this provision, on one
or more of the following ground in particular: race, gender, sex,
ethnic or social origin, colour, sexual orientation, age,
disability, religion, conscience, belief, culture or language.”

Since EWTN is already being broadcast by your company to the rest
of Africa and is available to certain South Africans through
manual tuning of some decoders in South Africa, it seems obvious
to us that what your company is in fact doing, is simply
discriminating against Catholics in South Africa and also in
general against some of your viewers, even though they have
subscribed to your premium bouquet and the latest decoders.

The fact that other religious channels are available to South
Africans, such as a Muslim channel and other non-denominational
Christian channels, makes the case even more compelling that your
company is actively discriminating against Catholics.

I therefore request that you kindly make this channel available
to all South African Catholics and put an end to this unnecessary
and senseless discrimination. I do not believe that this
necessitates the need to engage in legal action to force this
action upon your company.

Yours sincerely
MARK NEL

Multichoice, for goodness sake, why not just behave sensibly and try make your customers happy! Do the right thing!  Turn on channel 348 for everyone in Africa! No-one believes this PR rubbish that you send to your clients:


1 comment:

  1. Dear Mark,

    Thanks to your blog I am now aware of this fact. I 'cogitated' over the matter since I already have EWTN installed but for a few days now there is a transmission problem.
    I am displeased that with 4 million Catholics in South Africa (according to Radio Veritas anyway!) and many, many more across the continent that it has been discontinued especially in light of the fact that with much fewer Muslims in the country (I doubt more than 1 million), there is an Islam channel!!!

    Should Catholics be made aware and write frequently on DSTV's twitter page and/or Facebook page, if there are those?

    I feel we should notify our priests repeatedly and through them convey to the Bishops.

    Worse come worse, perhaps the hard step of unsubscribing for a few months- I am getting ahead of myself.

    In the meantime, I will pray as I remember this issue. I will also praise God for this problem as I have learnt from Merlin Carothers' books- i.e. praise God FOR the negative situation.

    God bless and YAHWEH, YEHOSHUA AND THE HOLY SPIRIT RULE!

    Tom

    ReplyDelete