This is interesting. An AFP report:
Africa is mulling setting up a 24-hour television news channel that would portray the continent in positive perspective on the global platform and promote a development agenda, officials said on Wednesday.
They said the channel, which will resemble pan-Arabic television Al-Jazeera, could be in place by next year. “We want to cover Africa as it is in a more balanced, honest way and focus on development of the continent. Africa is not about just aid, but it’s also about creating opportunities,” Salim Amin, the head of the Camerapix, the Kenyan-based company overseeing the exercise, told a pan-African media conference in Nairobi.
The pan-African and multilingual news and information channel, which plans to begin broadcasting late next year, will cost approximately 75 million dollars, said Amin.
Amin said the Doha-based Al-Jazeera had achieved more in broadcasting the views of the Arab world than a western TV channel could do, thus the need for Africans to raise their voices. Media experts attending the conference lamented that Africa had suffered poor coverage over the decades, being portrayed as a continent of disaster while there were numerous positive events thriving in its regions.
Let’s hope this works.
I’m almost certain that this will work. Africa needs a media like this and with the right management and team, sky is the limit.
I’m all for it, as long as the Diaspora (colonial and post-colonial) is included within its reach. African-Americans in the Americas are in desperate need for an African perspective on the world, one that will be broadcast from an African voice rather than one of our talking-head “civil rights leaders”.
However, if I’m correct , the reach of television (or, for that matter, most traditional media, including newspapers) on the continent is fairly limited, since the governments maintain varying degrees of monopoly on the transmission of such media. As we’ve seen with OBJ’s sedition charges – one of the guys charged was from – even satellite, the mainstay of television on the continent (since cable would cost more), isn’t safe.
I propose IPTV as an alternative, since Internet, while it is monopolized, has come under far less content-restrictive scrutiny, as noticed with the number of websites and blogs which heavily criticize OBJ (and other “big men”) on a daily basis.
Thanks for your comments. My problem is not with setting it up. Not at all. My point is, would it be sustained? I hope it would not go the way South Africa’s TV Africa went. Do you remember TV Africa on our airwaves a few years ago?
They claim it went down cos they could not generate enough revenue to sustain it. 😕
David, even here in the US, cable/satellite is only sustainable with large amounts of advertising (or, in the case of the rare non-commercial non-profit, like PBS or Link TV, heavy donations and/or government subsidies).
This is why they tend to be bought by media conglomerates, of which there are some five-or-so in the US television industry: Viacom (which CBS broke off from last year), Time Warner, News Corporation, General Electric, and Walt Disney. Being bought by one usually ensures a longer lifespan on the air, since these conglomerates also reach into other mediums, such as newspapers and radio, to generate a large amount of income that can be distributed between the different branches.
TV Africa folded due to the lack of sustainability, you say? In the above context, I most heartedly agree. I mean, you just can’t have the government (IMO, the worst backer of any venture of this sort) backing your venture and that’s it; al-Jazeera (the obvious model for this latest venture) is *privately-owned*.
Diversity is the key to sustainability in any situation: the audience, the mediums, the advertising, the allocation of income. All of it.
Unfortunately, countries on the continent have the tendency of doing the exact opposite. Hopefully, such behaviour won’t precurse such ventures as this.
Nigeria launches Communications Satellite
Nigeria now has a 2nd satellite in orbit – a communications satellite. This is the very same satellite project India was trying to out-do Nigeria to, in 2005.
Well, the satellite is now in orbit. According to XICHANG,
Experts estimate that the …
Well well cant believe that us kenyans almost did not rise to the occassion to subscribe to my tv africa ,alas here i come . Hope kenyans will give me supoort me more so strong technologies let me part of the synergy, to make kenya be part of the growing Africa to positively represent the continent.
Cant there be channels like sabc 1,sabc2 , sabc 3 & e -tv on dstv westafrica. Also ss3 on other bouquet order than premium ? Is it possible