Yusuph Olaniyonu
21 July 2008
Accra — Managing Director, Multichoice, South Africa, Mr Eben Langley, has said the greatest impact of the stiff competition among cable television service providers in Africa is the astronomical cost of doing business, occasioned by the high bid for television programme rights.
Langley, who spoke to THISDAY in Accra, venue of the CNN-Multichoice African Journalist Awards held yesterday, indirectly referred to the manner in which a Nigerian competitor, Hi-TV outbid his company for the three-year rights for English Premiership Football league matches.
He, however, added that his company was happy with the B-Package it got to show some top Premiership matches live to its 750,000 subscribers spread across 47 African nations.
"Our biggest challenge now is to stay ahead in the area of new technology. We are introducing new technology, new platforms that will help us to serve our subscribers better.
"One of the things we are busy doing now is to invest heavily in developing football locally across the continent. We are investing in local league competition matches and showing them on Super Sport and DStv. For example, we have arrangements that enable us to show matches from Kenya, Zambia, a couple of teams in Angola , South Africa and Nigeria.
"We show Super Eagles of Nigeria's matches in the World Cup and African Nations Cup qualifying series in collaboration with AIT. That is a shift of focus to putting back our gains into the continent. We are creating a perfect mix of local and international matches for our audience," Langley said.
While reviewing Multichoice's expectation from the 2010 World Cup to be hosted by South Africa, Langley said the mundial would be a credit to Africa. He said his organisation is doing so much to promote the game in the continent, because it was convinced that an African nation is capable of winning the next World Cup.
He said by showing local league matches, broadcasting well-researched facts on the history of the game in Africa and sensitising the rest of the world on the rate of growth in the game in Africa, Multichoice was trying to propel African teams to go for the highest price in the most popular sport in the world.
Langley said part of the new focus of his organisation to serve its subscribers better is the preparation towards airing of the Big Brother Three Reality Show. He also said Nigerian subscribers would soon have an additional channel with full Nigerian content and produced in the country.
The Multichoice MD further said the CNN-Multichoice African Journalist Award series was part of the companyís corporate social responsibility to give back to the continent and to celebrate excellence among practitioners in the African media.
"We enjoy a lot support from the media. We believe the award helps to encourage and expose African journalists and give them better training as provided for the winners at the CNN center. You know we also sponsor about 400 resource centres in public schools across Africa.and our success rate in all these endeavours has been tremendous," Langley said.
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