The Ministry for Women, Children and Persons with Disabilities on Friday welcomed an announcement by Multichoice that there will be no launch of a pornographic channel on DSTV.
"The decision to abandon the idea is in line with the efforts to protect children from accessing pornographic material," spokesman Sibani Mngadi said.
"The decision also underlines the necessity to protect human dignity of women who are often projected in a negative and degrading manner in such media products.
"The country has to work with its media sector to ensure that women are not presented as inferior beings or exploited as sexual objects and commodities," Mngadi said.
MultiChoice South Africa's group chief executive officer, Nolo Letele said yesterday that research indicated that a significant portion of subscribers were against adult channels.
This, however, was also while other people were indifferent to it and another significant number were positive. The decision comes after MultiChoice announced last month that it was conducting research on the idea of launching a porn channel.
By Wednesday a total of 41 381 South Africans had already voted no to the channel in Solidarity's Helping Hand campaign.
Letele said MultiChoice regularly conducted research to test viewer's tastes and impressions of existing and new television channels to improve customer service.
