Ho Chi Minh City residents do not have much choice when it comes to cable television, having to choose between SCTV and HTVC. And then, it is a case of six of one and half a dozen of another in terms of programming quality and viewer-friendliness.
In the last year Saigon Tourist and Vietnam Television (VTV), who own SCTV, have increased monthly subscription three times, doubling it to VND88,000(US$4.4) last month.
They explained that the money is required for upgrading equipment, buying new programs, and producing new shows.
One of the channels they claimed to have improved is SCTV1, a comedy channel. On October 2 a new in-house comedy was scheduled to premiere at 8.30pm. But at the announced time, there were only commercials.
Finally the show began at 8.45pm. It featured a conversation between two drunkards and apparently left most viewers cold. To make things worse, there was a burst of commercials every 20 minutes or so.
Many subscribers complain that SCTV is too focused on films and then only broadcasts old ones.
SCTV9, for instance, is dedicated to Asian movies but shows mostly Chinese movies from the nineties. SCTV is meant for movies from all over the world and SCTV16 for western films.
SCTV7 is meant for theater but also shows films, as do “general programming” channels like SCTV6 and SCTV12.
Another complaint is that most shows broadcast on SCTV are repeats of what have been shown on national channels like VTV and HCMC TV (HTV). Movies shown on the general film channel are repeated on other channels the same day.
SCTV promised to start showing Vietnamese films at prime time in September but has yet to do so.
From having just one channel that broadcast Vietnamese and foreign films along with many foreign channels, the cable company has expanded and now has 17 SCTV channels which also show music, sports, skits, and cartoon.
In the last few years many foreign channels like MTV, Travel and Living, and Super Sports have gone and been replaced by SCTV’s own channels.
In the same boat with HTVC
Many people decided to stop subscribing to SCTV after its serial fee hike.
Sensing an opportunity, HTVC launched a promotion to wean away customers from its rival – customers who had paid SCTV but wanted to switch to HTVC did not have to pay the installation charge.
But soon many became disillusioned after realizing that they were hardly getting anything better.
Commercials and TV shopping get as much screen time as programs, with commercials also permanently running in the form of a ticker at the bottom.
Old movies, game shows, and music shows broadcast on HTV’s terrestrial channels get another airing on its cable channels. HTVC+, a news and information channel, only shows commercial and TV shopping, sometimes for as long as an hour.
Huy Van of Tan Phu District said: “I stopped watching SCTV since there are not many sports programs, especially soccer, though the fee kept increasing. I thought HTVC would be different and switched. But now I realized that they are just the same.”
“The quality of HTVC’s cable programs is going down," Nhat Thien of District 7, who has been subscribing to HTVC for three years, said. "The signal is often lost and not fixed for up to a day."
"The sports channels are boring with just a few live broadcasts of soccer or volleyball. The rest of the time, sports channels only play music.”
