SABC Encore was a 24-hour

free-to-air Free-to-air (FTA) services are television (TV) and radio services broadcast in unencrypted form, allowing any person with the FTA Receiver, appropriate receiving equipment to receive the signal and view or listen to the content without requiring ...

digital satellite Satellite television is a service that delivers television programming to viewers by relaying it from a communications satellite orbiting the Earth directly to the viewer's location. The signals are received via an outdoor parabolic antenna commo ...

and

digital terrestrial television Digital terrestrial television (DTTV or DTT, or DTTB with "broadcasting") is a technology for terrestrial television in which land-based (terrestrial) television stations broadcast television content by radio waves to televisions in consumers' ...

retro rerun channel created and owned by the

South African Broadcasting Corporation The South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) is the public broadcaster in South Africa, and provides 19 radio stations ( AM/ FM) as well as six television broadcasts to the general public. It is one of the largest of South Africa's state ...

, as a carriage deal between the SABC and

Multichoice MultiChoice is a South African company that operates DStv, a major satellite television service in Sub-Saharan Africa and GOtv, a minor service operating in over 9 countries of this area and Showmax service. MultiChoice was formed out of the sub ...

. This channel stopped airing at midnight on 1 June 2020 after MultiChoice's decision not to renew the channel once its contract had come to an end and was seemingly revived through DTT.

History

The channel first came up as SABC Africa until it was discontinued back in 2008 in which it was not viable due to poor performance. SABC signed a 5 year agreement with MultiChoice and in that agreement it included a news channel which launched in 2013 and entertainment channel which was delayed due to the switch from analogue to digital television. The channel was set to launch as SABC Entertainment which never materialized in November 2013 then was delayed to the fall of 2014. In 2015, SABC Encore launched on DStv through the family package and a few weeks later on the Easyview package. On 20 May 2020, it was announced that a longstanding partner of the MultiChoice Group, the channel will be ceasing broadcast in Africa at 00:30 on 1 June 2020 and it will no longer available from 1 June of that year. It was revealed by SABC that both parties ended their agreement back in 2018 and that the agreement was non-renewable and gave the channel a 2 year extension. Even though the channel is discontinued SABC mentioned they are looking at ways to possibly continue the channel through another platform and mentioned it again in 2021 through an interview on SAfm Radio. The brand was seemingly revived through DTT for a memorial service.

Programming

Controversies

At the channel's launch event, the COO of SABC at the time used that event to rant about making pay-tv platforms like MultiChoice's DStv pay for SABC 1-3 and how the SABC is run by a 'blind person'. He also took the stage to call out those with their 'lack of knowledge' over the deal the public broadcaster has for the channel alongside SABC News.

References

{{SABC Television stations in South Africa Television channels and stations established in 2015 Television channels and stations disestablished in 2020