Advanced Television

No fool like an ASO April 1

April 2, 2015

By Chris Forrester

Sometimes an April Fool joke can be so convincing and well detailed that a complete nation is taken in. Such was yesterday’s April 1st story on South Africa’s plans to abandon its digital TV adoption plan and carried by Advanced-Television.com.

The story, which told of South Africa’s continuing commitment to analogue TV, managed to fool most of the people, most of the time, which is about as good as it gets.

But the gag quickly evaporated when Sentech, South Africa’s TV transmission organisation went ballistic, and not helped by the story gaining immense traction on South African web-sites (mostly supporting the analogue TV status quo, incidentally). South Africa’s president Jacob Zuma was obliged to put out an official statement.

However, we too admit to being suckered in by the authentic nature of the report, and equally happy to say that South Africa’s migration plan to all-digital transmission, and to Kudelski’s encryption scheme staying firmly in place, remains the government’s aim.

Categories: Articles, Broadcast, DTT/DSO