DStv As Government Utility

Predictably, MultiChoice Nigeria’s recent announcement,
via text messages to subscribers, of price adjustments
on its DStv and GOtv platforms, has kicked up a storm.
Two major reasons make the storm predictable. First,
buyers of products or users of services do not rub their
hands in glee when prices go up, however marginally.
The second is the prevalent feeling that MultiChoice’s
DStv service is some sort of government utility.
Government utilities in Nigeria are usually squalid
because we are unwilling to pay at all or pay enough to
make them efficient. To be clear, I am for low-priced
items, but only if optimum value is deliverable at rock-
bottom prices. However, I know, for a fact, that
premium television content such as delivered by
MultiChoice’s DStv, even if I desperately wish, is not
something I will get at the type of price we like to pay
for government utilities. It is also not difficult to see that
government utilities are not what they are supposed to
be because we are unwilling to pay what will make them
sustainably efficient.
This, for me, makes the anger over
DSTV
the recent price adjustments a bit difficult to
understand. The new rates, which kick in on 1 May, will
see subscribers on the premium bouquet paying
N14,700 instead of N13,980 that they currently
pay.Those on Compact Plus will pay N9,900 instead of
the current N9,420, while Compact subscribers will pay
N6,300 instead of N6,000. For the Family bouquet, the
new subscription is N3,800 as opposed to the current
rate of N3,600, while that of the Access bouquet will be
N1,900 instead of N1,800.
The last time MultiChoice raised subscription, I am
certain, was in 2015, when naira was devalued and
exchanged at N167 to a dollar. The story of the naira
since then, I believe, has sufficiently been told to require
any retelling here. What has the dollar got to do with
MultiChoice? Plenty. Even the garri seller blames the
American currency for the astronomical jump in the
prices of garri. In fact, almost everybody, including
those who have never done a transaction in CFA Francs
or Ghanaian Cedi, blames the jump in prices on the
dollar. And they are right. The dollar (more accurately the
dipping naira value) has affected the prices of most
things we use because they are imported. And when the
prices imported goods leap so high, those of locally ones
made have no chance of staying the same. Back to
DStv. DStv, like other pay-TV companies, does not own
every content it broadcasts. In most cases, it is simply a
vendor or aggregator to content owners, who sell to it
for re-sale to subscribers. The nature of the pay-TV
ecosystem is one of domination by content owners/
creators. The steep dip in naira value and the attendant
inflation in operational costs leaves DStv with no option
other than to make price adjustments. Content
production and content owners are at the mercy of
domestic and international economic indices.
Local and international content is dollar-denominated
because most pay-TV platforms operate across
international borders.
Sellers of other goods and providers of service similarly
affected by the slide in naira value have adjusted rates
and prices. Curiously, they are not savaged by the
public. DStv, like sellers and providers of service, is a
business. I doubt if there is a business in Nigeria today
that still charges what it charged in 2015. My
neighbourhood pepper soup seller does not. Neither does
my neighbourhood supermarket.
Only government utilities retain 2015 prices, the reason
we do not enjoy them.