Before my parents could afford to pay for DSTV and officially move up the middle-class ladder, my source of entertainment solely relied on hiring VHS videos from Mr Video (unfortunately, DVDs didn’t exist at the time). My entertainment options varied when my father upgraded our television set to the biggest Panasonic TV I had ever seen. It was not plasma nor HD, but a humongous TV set nonetheless - the type that required four men to carry and place carefully onto your mother’s enormous room divider from Bradlows.
This TV not only provided me with three SABC channels, but, on top of that, two hours of M-Net open time. Now back in the 90s, especially in the townships, when your household had M-Net, you guys were borderline balling!
Granted, I could only view M-Net for two hours per day, but those were the best TV hours of my life! From 5pm to 7pm, I would make a date with the open time slot as I caught the last five minutes of Afrikaans soapie Egoli, and then prepared myself for a full two hours of comedy shows like Smart Guy, Keenan and Kel and more.
Do you also remember that M-Net also had presenters, I vaguely remember one presenter who had a name and surname that were the same. His name was Scot Scott.
You can only imagine how patiently I would wait for the clock to strike 5pm, and how I dreaded the approach of 7pm - which marked the cut off time for our open time. It was even worse when an advert would suddenly play at 6:55pm, right in the middle of an exciting scene. At that time M-Net would decide to air three adverts.
Only in my adulthood did I understand the importance of adverts, but, as a kid, that was so annoying! By then I knew I had only two minutes left of open time and, just when the show was about to start again, the image on my TV screen would get distorted and it was back to normal TV!
Check out our YoTV presenter TBT article here
M-Net open time was such an awful teaser, and the fact that they had great TV content at that time didn’t make things easier for us who enjoyed those free two hours.
But fast-forward to 2015 and now M-Net can be watched at my leisure whether at 1:00am or at 10:00pm. In the words of AKA “iLife iDifferant”, but boy did I enjoy my two hours of open time back in the day.
Did you have M-Net open time back in the day?
