Sunday, November 25, 2007

HiTV:The Mother Of All Rip-Offs

I just want to ask one question.Realistically, I doubt I’ll get an appropriate answer but I’ll ask anyway. Why do most things Nigerian always have K leg? As I type this, I’m no longer as angry as I was around this time yesterday. Simply because Arsenal won & our rivals Man Utd lost, giving us a 3 point lead at the top of the premiership table.Unfortunately, I didn’t get to see the game despite having two satellite dishes at home and religiously forking out N13,000 a month on combined subscription fees. So how come I wasn't able to see my darling club play yesterday? Simple: HiTV.The ‘sadly Nigerian’ cable company did it again, but this time it was on an unprecedented scale. For close to 4 hours yesterday, all I, as well as hundreds of thousands of soccer fans across the country, saw on the soccer channel was ‘scrambled’. As most of us know,’scrambled’ is reserved for only those whose subscription have expired and as such, have had their access disconnected. Well yesterday, even one with a 10-year subscription was in the same boat of non-visibility. Every football lover who had eagerly awaited the game was left stranded.I also feel sorry for Liverpool fans as the signals vanished 20 minutes into their team's exciting game with Newcastle.No explanations. No mercy.Helpless.I had to keep checking the internet for updates on the goings-on at the Emirates. All we got later was a silly, arrogant 10 second apology from the studio’s so-called soccer analyst. I can’t remember his name, but ‘airhead’ would suffice as an appropriate substitution.
What makes yesterday’s events more annoying was because this was the umpteenth time we had been subjected to similar rubbish from airhead's employers. From delayed transmission of live matches to poor, unwatchable signals for a significant portion of games, we’ve seen it all this season. Their company slogan should read ‘Mediocre Are Us’,instead of the laughable 'Correct TV' they stupidly claim.That's as blasphemous as calling Whoopi Goldberg the sexiest woman in Hollywood.My people, we don suffer for this country. Some apologists keep saying ‘give them time’, ‘it would get better’ etc but that’s just a load of hogwash. I’m tired of always having hope & faith in most Nigerian ventures only to be sent crashing back down to earth, every single time. I actually had a feeling all this would happen when I heard that this joke of a company had, through some Abuja connections, obtained the right to broadcast 80% of the premiership games this season.
Personally, Osama Bin Laden can have the broadcast rights for all I care.Just give me uninterrupted access to what I paid for.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Why 'm i not surprised, the weekend HItv began to beam premiership, i saw the MD already celebrating @ the Palms, in my head i thought that was kind of premature. But before my people would say 'sour grapes' i congratulated him. Snookering Multichoice is definitely not an easy feat, but getting the premiership beaming rights and running a TV station are two different things, i read Mass Commucation as a degree, and i can tell u for free that Broadcast(TV or Radio) is equipment driven.
What Multichoice is today has taken 10 years, from there evolving technology to help from South African partners and Nigerian's patronage.
So what i felt Toyin Subair should have done was, take his premiership beaming rights to Multichoice and not bother wasting his money on any infrastructure, charge Multichoice an agreed sum on each suscriber, they already have the 36 states covered anyways so all he needed was there Data base.
Big companies all over the world merge together constantly, ExxonMobil, TotalElf to mention a few, it wouldn't have been unheard of if he had approached Multichoice and not let his personal issues with his former mentor(Dewunmi Ogunsanya) chairman of Multichoice, cloud a would have been wonderful bussiness decision.
We the suscribers would only have to pay more because of the ripple effect, but @ least we would get to watch what we paid for.
For a company that would enjoy this beaming rights for three seasons only 'm afraid to think of what will happen if Multichoice wins the next Premiership beaming bid...FSTV does that name ring a bell...

Anonymous said...

I knew it was a rip off from the word go.Hitv cant achieve much using its current platform.The objective of promoting HITV is faulty as nothing built on falsehood would hold.
Toyin Subair and Frank Nweke thinks they have it figured out but wait till the end of their contract and see how Nigerians would drop their platform n they would realise they dont have the last laugh.
Personally I am sticking with DSTV and though I cant get to watch my teams game live ,I make do with eurosport.yahoo.co.uk for minute by the minute text commentary

Unknown said...

i think we ought to give koodoos to HITV for their really inovative idea. i am not saying we shld ignore their problems, like u said it took Multichoice 10years to get to wh they are now. i think we shld give HITV time to blossom.

i am a Nigerian thru and thru and i was one of the first people tpo support Globacom when they first came out why? because we need companies that are hundred percent nigerian cos they are the only ones that will help nigeria grow when u look at the big picture. so all i am saying is when a company is willing to go big, give them a hand.

GO HITV!
Give a brother a chance to bring something good out of our country.

i know u r game.

PS i hope you caled customer care and complained so they can know where they need corrections.

Unknown said...

i think u ought to give HITV a chance to do something good for Nigeria. tessa