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Tag: MultiChoice Africa

  • More Children’s entertainment with launch of ‘PBS Kids’

    PBS Distribution in an effort to reach more children has partnered with MultiChoice Africa to bring high-quality educational children’s content to the DStv and GOtv platforms available in all of sub-Saharan Africa.

    The new package which kicked-off on May 22, 2019, will have active DStv customers as well as GOtv Max and GOtv Plus customers enjoy Pinkalicious and Wordworld, Arthur and other well-known PBS KIDS series available on their decoder.

    “MultiChoice is always open to exploring ways to expand our customer offering, adding a children’s channel that is not only entertaining but also experiential and educational adds value to our DStv and GOtv packages,” says Martin Mabutho, Chief Customer Officer, MultiChoice Nigeria.

    Andrea Downing, Co-President of PBS Distribution, added: “We are excited to offer this new audience the opportunities that PBS KIDS content offers.  PBS KIDS is the number one educational media brand for kids, offering children the opportunity to explore new ideas and new worlds. DStv and GOtv are inviting parents and children to experience this trusted content that helps children learn and grow.”

    Read Also: Children’s day: 11 ways to prevent your child from sexual abuse

    Peterrific based on the beloved book series by Victoria Kann. It encourages children to engage in self-expression and to explore the arts, including music, dance, and visual arts.

    Kids will be inspired to get creative by Pinkalicious, Peter, and their friends through adventures in their neighborhood of Pinkville

    Arthur is based on the best-selling children’s books by Marc Brown and follows the adventures of eight-year-old Arthur Read, while WordWorld, through the lovable WordFriends, take children on adventures in a world of words where they encounter problems that can only be solved by building a word. It playfully demonstrates the connections between letters, sounds, words and meanings to empower children to advance from learning letters to learning how to read.

    PBS KIDS will also feature episodes from Postcards from Buster, Peep and The Big Wide World and Time Warp Trio.

  • X-raying future of pay-television in Africa

    The 5th Digital Dialogue Conference, facilitated by MultiChoice Africa, points the way for Africa’s pay-television industry.

    The future of the pay-television industry in Africa was, again, the focus at the 5th Digital Dialogue Conference, which held in Dubai between 2 and 5 May. The conference, organised by MultiChoice Africa, debuted in 2012 as a thought leadership platform for better understanding of the future of the continent’s pay-television industry.

    Attendees comprised of industry thought leaders and leading minds in the African media industry.

    Speaking at the conference, David Abraham, former Chief Executive of UK’s Channel 4, said the future of pay-television is more fragmented and messy.

    “The old walls of traditional pay-TV are now tumbling down and what’s coming next is infinitely more fragmented, and messy,” said Abraham

    According to him, the economic pay-television model used to be about a battle between free-TV and service providers’ creating pay-television walls and maintaining exclusivity over key content in order to promote monthly subscriptions and minimise loss of customers.

    This, he explained, now faces threat because of broadband as additional service and mobile phone technology. Abraham said the advent of telecommunication service providers, who are producing content, has raised the question of whether consumers will be able to shuttle among so many different providers to find the best content.

    While stating that the future is uncertain, Abraham said: “The African continent, with its younger populations and progressive use of mobile, can both build on and leapfrog Western markets in terms of future models of content creation and distribution.”

    Another speaker, Paul Papadimitriou told the conference that pay-television need to understand their consumer better as a means to determining what they watch, where they watch and for how long they watch.

    Papadimitriou, a futurist and innovation expert, said: “As such the current challenge for pay-TV companies is to shift the focus from content delivery systems to understanding its consumers through primary data – for instance when they watch, how long and how much.”

    He noted that the way consumers watch television has greatly evolved, adding that it is critical for companies to understand the new consumption habits and mindsets of consumers.

    “The new consumer is nomadic – they can be everywhere and anywhere, tribal – gathering around similarities, and singular – entrepreneurial and being who they want to be. The best innovators are like the best travelers – they’re not afraid of unknown territories. They understand who people are and the journeys they’re on. They just do it,” he said.

    MultiChoice’s entertainment boss Yolisa Phahle advised the African television industry to step up its approach to engaging with viewers, who now have more free content choices available than ever before.

    She explained that there is a need to amplify African stories with digital technology.

    “Today in the midst of the digital revolution, collectively, we have the opportunity to not only tell stories that educate and inform African audiences, but the digital age means we are in a position to take African stories to the world, and create a global market for what we do.

    “By using the internet and leveraging technology, we have the ability to reach audiences at a global level and the success of companies like Iroko TV, artists like Davido, actresses like Lupita N’yongo and the movie Black Panther are confirmation that the world is ready to consume African stories, celebrate African culture and embrace African languages,” she said.

    Phahle believes that the producers of content that resonates will survive.

    “What we do know however is that people today consume more news and entertainment than ever and I believe this trend will continue. The delivery mechanisms will change, and in many ways, digital is just another route to market, but the producers of the most relevant and resonant content will survive,” she said.

    Nigerian film producer, Femi Odugbemi, said Nollywood, the Nigerian film industry, will grow bigger if it takes proper advantage of digital changes.

    “Digital solutions will open up a number of possibilities across Nollywood’s sub-sectors, including distribution, production, manpower and governance.”

    “If there has ever been an industry that created digital dialogue from the word go, it would be Nollywood,” he said.

    He added that filmmaking in Nigeria is becoming more sophisticated because of the growing options of digital filmmaking such as virtual scene creation.

    For Anthony Lilley, a professor of Creative Industries at Ulster University in Northern Ireland, television companies will have to work harder at capturing and retaining the attention of viewers in view of the volume of information competing for attention.

    “How do you grab attention, create meaning, and tell stories? How do we engage with people’s passions and what does it all mean for our culture? The answers to these questions can be answered by three major factors affecting content businesses of today: video-on-demand (VOD), personal-mobile and that we are inundated with data and intelligence which can do new things,” he said.

    He noted that those who can capture people’s attention can sell it to someone else, adding that it is the way television companies sell advertisement space – “because there’s a captive audience that is paying attention.”

  • ‘Why people confuse Pay TV with Pay-as-you-go’

    ‘Why people confuse Pay TV with Pay-as-you-go’

    Tim Jacobs was appointed CEO of MultiChoice Africa in April 2015. He was appointed Director of Finance for MultiChoice South Africa Holdings and the MultiChoice South Africa board in April 2014. He spoke to a select group of journalists in Nairobi, Kenya on the sidelines of the recent CNN Multichoice African Journalists Award on issues surrounding the company’s operations in Nigeria and the rest of the continent, as well as the changing Pay TV environment. Managing Director, Multichoice Nigeria, John Ugbe, sat in on the discussion. Excerpts:

    What is your experience with Nigeria and the Nigerian market?

    I have been coming to Nigeria not specifically for Multichoice but for other companies that I have worked probably for the last 15 years or so. I have to say that the change in Lagos is quite significant. The thing I like most about Nigerians is specifically the kind of the deep passion to be entrepreneurial, to get things done, to try to make a difference in peoples’ lives, which means that people are already focused on business opportunities, they are focused as consumers on what they need, they are very clear in their own mind about what it is that they are trying to do. I think some of the other countries that I travelled to are little bit more formalized, you know people with formal jobs, the kind of go-get attitudes is a little bit less pronounced because they do a 9-5. So, for me, Nigeria is a really interesting market opportunity; it is also very difficult. The Nigerian market and the Nigerian consumer is very activist; they don’t like surprises in the system; they tend to react quite strongly to anything that they perceive as negative, which obviously, as a consumer-based business, means that we need to be on top of our game; we need to make sure that what we do in the country really makes sense for the consumer.

    We also understand that there are times when we do things that are not popular, but we do it in the interest of the business. So, because we are very conscious of the way that the consumers are likely to react, we tend to think quite deeply before we do stuff that is going to result in a negative impact. We try to minimize the impact. In Nigeria, we have been very fortunate that after the price increase we put through on the first of April, we haven’t had to put another price increase into the market yet.

    Obviously it depends on the currency, if the currency does move materially, we may well have to do that but at the moment we have been able to avoid doing that in Nigeria. And I think that is largely because the government and the central bank have been very strong on the policy decision-making. They haven’t reacted to short-term movement in the black market rate and the weakening of the oil price; they have managed to hold firm. So, we’re very hopeful that the currency stays, so we don’t need to put a price increase. But obviously, time will tell.

    What are you doing to improve on your content?             

    I don’t think that an improvement on content is the issue right now. If you think about the Nigerian market, we have all the Africa Magic channels. We have new shows that are coming into Africa Magic all the time… really strong telenovelas.  Now, I don’t think that we can say we are going to improve on that; what we are going to do is to refresh. The MNet team that is based in Nigeria is constantly looking at scripts, constantly looking at new programming. So, as one really popular series kind off comes through, we then replace it with another one. A couple of months ago, we put Zee World into the African continent, Nigeria included. That has been resounding success; the market has really responded well to that. So, in combination with the existing line up, refreshing the existing line up, the programming within those channels and bringing stuff like Zee World on, I think the offering that we got at the moment in the Nigerian market is very strong.

    Without coming up with another subscription price increase, how have you been striking balance between the cost of doing business in Nigeria and the target of making profit?

    Just to put this into context, Nigeria is actually one of the cheapest subscription models that we run on the continent. You guys can easily go to the Internet and see what consumers in other countries pay. Nigeria pays $20 dollars cheaper than probably all of your neighbours. Now, some of that is because of other considerations … there’s the VAT rate and other things that the consumer has to pay for in other country. But Nigeria is a very affordable pay television market; it is one of the cheapest in the world. What we have done in the Nigerian market is we have kept the price low over many years in order to try and stimulate the market, because Nigeria is a potentially large economy. We have so many potential subscribers. Our growth in Nigeria, I would say, has been good. I think our GOtv platform, which kind of attracts the lower end of the market, has been doing incredibly well over the last year, particularly about December last year when we introduced a very cheap price, so we subsidize very deep to get to $20. That has obviously stimulated demand, but we need scale.

    In Nigeria, what we are always hoping for is that we can keep the prices reasonably low if we get the scale… We just launched Mnet Igbo as we continue trying to satisfy many segments of the market. We are happy to continue to invest, but we need to obviously see the scale coming into the business. When we get that, then we keep the balance, then we keep the price reasonably low and provide good additional content.

    What is your take on pay per view?

    Pay per view is a very simple financial equation. If you want to do pay per view, you have to take whatever content the person wants to watch; Let’s take the obvious one, the EPL. You take the cost of the EPL, you say how many subscribers do I have, then I divide the cost by the number of subscribers that want to watch EPL and that’s how many people pay for it.

    Now we have worked the numbers. Anywhere in the world, pay per view is materially more expensive for the person who wants to watch only that piece of content, then binding all the content together and spreading over the time market. It is just a mathematical calculation; it is not that complicated.

    Ugbe: Maybe to distinguish, because some people say pay per view when they are talking about pay as you go, which is not a TV model; it is a communication model because you can start and stop the conversation. Think about it. If you are watching an EPL game and you stop at the 30th minute, what do you do? Do you pay for the game or do you not? So, you see, it is not a TV content model. There is a lot of confusion about it in the market. It is a communication thing because it’s two-ways. But for TV, you can’t watch 10 minutes of a movie and just pay for 10 minutes.

    Tim Jacobs: I have got two examples that can show you what has happened elsewhere in the world. In the US, the Manny Pacquiao and Mayweather fight, if you wanted to watch it for one evening, one day cost $99! It’s not a full day; it’s a couple of hours. Rugby World Cup in the US at the moment, as I understand it, is also close to $90, $89 or something, for the duration of the World Cup. So let’s call that a month and half.

    If you want watch Rugby World Cup in the US, you pay a single fee of almost $90. In Nigeria, you guys are paying for Premium subscription just over $60 a month equivalent and for that $60 a month gives you all of the content. Okay, maybe Nigerians don’t want to watch Rugby, but the same principles apply if we want to charge you the same way – pay as you go for the EPL. Remember, the EPL is a right cost and much more expensive than the Rugby World Cup or the Manny Pacquiao fight. The pay as you go is a nice concept. Everybody likes it. And the reason people think that is an option is that they think about Netflix. You know that I can go and get a VPN and I can just watch whatever I want with $10 a month. But, remember, their content is old content. Its stuff that is not fresh, it is not stuff that is happening now and with sport TV in particular, it only means anything to people when they watch it live. Nobody wants to go three weeks after Chelsea plays Man U and say watch it over again. It has 10 percent the value of the live match.

    MTN just secured Pay-TV licence to operate in Nigeria. How is the impending competition likely to affect Multichoice?

    Ugbe: Multichoice has always welcomed competition. One thing we want to say is that we are very focused on what we do. We are very internally focused and on what we can deliver to our subscribers and this means we welcome competition but we will keep doing what we do and our aim is to deliver the best possible product. Fortunately, you can get a licence; anyone can get licence. And contrary to a lot of belief, we do have competition out there. We are in pay entertainment, so, really, your DVD is competition. But what we are focused on doing is putting the right package together. As a team, we’ve spoken a lot about keeping the prices very reasonable, which involves a lot of deep subsidies sometimes, just to be able to get products into the hands of the subscribers.

    Jacobs: We are often asked this question about Multichoice’s ‘dominance’. We don’t see our position in the market place as dominance. One, we have lots of competitors at the bottom end of the market. Let’s take something that is really kind of top of market in Nigeria, the whole digital migration. So we started in Nigeria two years behind the other operator in the market and the only way that we could compete was on a reasonable price point and with top grade content. Now, given that they were there two years before us, there is no reason whatsoever why their offering shouldn’t resonate with Nigerians.

    They had two years to figure out what you guys like, what you don’t l like. Now if we run a very good and very successful business and we are competitive, I don’t see that as and cannot describe that as dominance. What we do is understand and pay attention to what the Nigerian consumer wants. The issue is not dominance, we are just good at what we do and we try to really resonate with the consumer.

    We don’t like to put out a price increase into the market, we only do so when it is absolutely necessary ; it is the balance that John is talking about. We don’t see ourselves as dominant; we see ourselves as a very good supplier that understands what its consumers want. The consumers have a choice, they can go to any other platform or competitors but If they choose to come to us, that is just because we happen to be good at what we do. We don’t see ourselves as this dominant player that just dominates everything. We actually have to fight every single day, to make sure that what we offer is a better offer for the consumers, because the consumers can walk to me and say they don’t want this product, they want my competitor’s product, and they have the right and the ability to do that.

    Can you share your vision for Multichoice?

    The vision for Multichoice is a very clear one. We need to do a couple of things: We need to be responsive to our consumers’ need. We understand that on the African continent – because that is where we have chosen to play in the future, on the African continent –we need to become more localised, which is why we continue to produce, for example, more Africa magic channels.

    So we are doing more localisation. We are bringing Bollywood into our programming; we are bringing Nollywood into our programming. This is a representation of the strategy at Multichoice; we are becoming more localised. At the same time, we also have premium subscribers who are used to and want and demand the top-end Hollywood content.

    So what we are doing is that we are expanding the cost base in order to cater to more of those needs of different population groups. In the same micro-economic kind of content proposition that we are doing in Nigeria, we are starting to do it in some of our other markets, so we are busy launching a channel in Tanzania to cater to that specifically. We have Zambezi Magic, which is launched for the southern territories; we have programming for Django Magic, our Portuguese market. Our long-term vision is to become more and more localised; and in doing that, we want to win and maintain the hearts of the consumer. We want to be their first choice.

    We also want to bring onto our platforms the local channels. So John gets hammered by me on weekly basis about anybody that he doesn’t have, any free-to-air that he doesn’t have on our platform. That is our commitment: one, develop our local programming for our local market; two, make sure that if a third party has got really good content that is resonating with our audiences, we get that content and make it available to our customers; and three, make sure that we bring local programming onto our platform to ensure that the consumer has access to the best that we can offer at every single territory that we are in, and to do that at the cheapest price point that we can.

    But unfortunately when the currency devalues – because a lot of our input cost is in dollars – that is when we have to put the price increase into market. Unfortunately, some of our territories have increased drastically this year. It’s been actually horrendous for us to do that, but if we want to maintain that vision of giving more local content to the audiences, they have to be able to pay for it.

    Will a time ever come when the rains don’t disrupt programmes being watched by customers?

    Ugbe: Sometimes when there is very big cloud cover at the beginning of the rainfall, you can have that interruption. There are certain things that are natural, I mean with satellite technology this will happen everywhere in the world. I have had to take few pictures sitting in New York and from the UK when there is a break in transmission occasioned by rain. So it’s worldwide. However, we have a lot more rain in two very big places I think are Liberia and Nigeria in terms of rainfall in the whole world. Obviously, we will get a big more interruption. Few things we have done to reduce this. One is strengthen the power of our satellite and the other is moving from satellite to satellite to ensure more power. We have always gone with high-power satellites.

    Two, we’ve done training for installation because a number of times what we found out is that when it rains and we ask some subscribers to check the quality of their installation we find it at may be 40% or so. This is when it is more susceptible to the challenges of weather.

    I ask people, you’ve had DStv for about how long now? Maybe for about 10 years. Have you ever got your dish realigned? No. But your car, how often do you service it? Well, I service it every other time. So that’s another thing we are beginning to promote among people to say, after a while, for instance in Lagos with a lot of the winds, your dish is moving a little bit out of alignment. We need to check that, we need to get your signal level to above 90% because that will eventually help because this is just the power of the signal and the rain cutting into the signal.

    It takes quite some time for decoders to reboot. I was wondering if it’s something Multichoice is looking at.

     

  • ‘Piracy destroying broadcasting’

    ‘Piracy destroying broadcasting’

    The entry of Multichoice has revolutionised broadcasting, especially TV cable broadcast, in Nigeria. However, there are insinuations that the firm charges higher rates in Nigeria than it does in its home country, South Africa, a charge denied by Nico Meyer, chief executive, Multichoice Africa. In this interview with SIMEON EBULU, he also speaks on piracy and other issues.

     

    How important is Africa Magic Viewers’ Choice Awards and its impact on content development in Africa?

    From our perspective in Multichoice, we continue to invest in local content and Africa Magic Viewer’s Choice Awards is part and parcel of the recognition of local content and its development across the continent. We use the Africa Magic Viewer’s Choice Awards as a platform to help nurture local content.

    What is your assessment of the impact of Multichoice, DSTV and GOTV content on African subscribers?

    For us, it’s about an experience and the way to convey the experience is through content. So, DSTV, which has already been on the continent for 20 years, does exactly that. We have also recently launched GOTV to enhance the service. So, to us, content is extremely important to both DSTV and GOTV subscribers, especially local African content. That partly accounted for our huge investment in it, as well as the AMVCA rewards.

    People have observed that your charges are higher in Nigeria than South Africa. Why?

    That’s simply not true. When compared, in terms of our services that we provide in other African countries, Nigeria is one of the lowest in terms of what we charge. But also bear in mind that we also provide services for different levels of income. So, we have structured our bouquets to actually satisfy the different levels of income. The GOTV service is by far the lowest as per cost and it goes up gradually into the different tiers of services we provide on DSTV, up to premium bouquet. Now when you compare that to the entire continent, Nigeria is actually one of the lowest.

    Normally in financial planning, a large subscriber base should result in reduced charges. How has that worked for DSTV in terms of pricing?

    There are a couple of factors here that we need to take cognisance of. One is that we continue to invest in local content. So you would have seen over the last 10 years that we continue to invest more and more into local content.

    Secondly, with a lot of the international content that we bring, payment is based on the number of people using the services. So, when you have an increase in the number of people using the service, the cost also increases proportionate to the increase in the number of people using the service.

    So, you find that when you continue to invest in the industry, that the cost is increasing over time. Part of our investment in local content is because it’s so important to nurture local content in the development of quantities.

    For instance in Nairobi, Kenya, we have set up a studio to facilitate the creation of local content. Also in Lagos, we have studios here, and we are in the process of bringing more and more content into the studios here in Lagos. It is important that we continue to invest in the industry because that is the only way you get the industry to continue to grow.

    How is Multichoice Africa positioning, compared to competition?

    As I have said, we have been on the continent for more than two decades. So, we are here for the long run. Also, over the last 10 years, we have invested heavily in local content through the means of Africa Magic.

    So, we are focused on bringing the best digital television experience to the consumer. And that is where our investment is. Our altitude towards competition is that we welcome competition. And the reason we welcome competition is that it expands the industry.

    Our belief is that as the industry grows, the quality of content will increase over time to such an extent that we will be able to export some of the content into the international market. And that is when we believe the industry will be on the right track.

    In terms of Corporate Social Responsibility, how does Muiltichoice contribute to the community?

    Corporate social investment is extremely important to us. Where we see ourselves playing that role is in the area of education on the continent. Our focus over many years, is in the Multichoice Resource Centres. We have rolled out these resource centres around the continent.

    In Nigeria, we have about 300 resource centres. And what we do at the resource centres, is that we utilise the content that we have for the growth of our education sector. We focus around the Natural Geographic Channel, the Animal Channel and the History channel.

    In other words, the educational content that we have, is provided in these resource centres, which are school-based for free. And this really helps education on the continent. And this has had a lot of impact across the continent and Multichoice has been doing this for so many years, and we will continue to do so.

    What has been the impact of piracy on your subscriber base in Nigeria?

    Let me talk a little bit about piracy. It is very detrimental to the growth of the creative industry in general. What really happens here is, you need to pump funds into the local industry to make it grow and with piracy, those funds are not available to pump into the industry. Piracy is destroying the broadcast industry, and this is applicable to both the local content providers as well as the international content providers. So, we are very active in terms of combating piracy. And piracy comes in many forms, but we have a systematic approach of continuously taking on piracy on all fronts. On one side, we are protecting our business, but also we are protecting the wider business of broadcasting in terms of future development.

    Is piracy perculiar to Nigeria alone?

    Piracy is across the continent and you see many forms of piracy, but the action we take is across all of the continent. We see the incident all across the continent.

    What other innovations should we expect from DSTV, going forward?

    The DSTV and GOTV experience is about technology. Over the years, we have   brought cutting edge technology to the markets we have operated in. when we brought digital terrestrial, it was the best standard that we brought.

    We are also continuing to expand further on our product line up. So, the latest product that we have brought into the market is the explorer PVR Decoder, and this allows consumers to really bring the internet experience into their homes. So even when you do not have a broadband connectivity  you can still experience the best film and sports content. And that is what our business is all about, it’s about the experience. The Explorer PVR is the latest platform for enjoying this experience and we will continue to bring this experience to the various markets.

    What will be Multichoice’s contribution to the Digital Switch over?

    We have been very very active with various governments across the continent to assist with the digital migration. I think it is important to understand that we have already started digital migration when we launched satellite in Nigeria many years ago. Now that we have got to digital terrestrial we continue to offer our assistance. We are very suitable partner to assist many governments in terms of digital switch over. We have also championed the education of the media on digital migration. We have organised digital dialogue summits for the African media across the continent, including Nigeria. We have the technology, we have the process, and we bring the best expertise to the table. We also have the best of content. All of this we bring to the table.

    Many foreign investors in Nigeria do not show commitment by acquiring assets. Is this the same case with Multichoice? Besides, have you come here to stay or are you just a briefcase investor?

    We have been in Nigeria for over 20 years. We have local partners and we have invested in numerous properties across the country, From Lagos through Abuja, where we have set up our offices. In the future, we will be setting up significant studios in Nigeria and that construction work has already commenced. So, Multichoice is firmly committed towards Nigeria. We were 20 years ago and we are and into the future. I think our track record says it all. Our commitment spans from investment in properties as well as our philosophy to employ locals manpower. And through this process we hope to give consumers in Nigeria exactly what they want.

  • ‘We have invested heavily in Nigeria’

    ‘We have invested heavily in Nigeria’

    On the sidelines of this year’s CNN Multichoice African Journalist of the Year Award held in Cape Town, South Africa, Nico Meyer, CEO, MultiChoice Africa, shed light on the company’s activities in Nigeria in a chat with selected journalists. FESTUS ERIYE was there.

    How would you assess your operations in Nigeria?

    We have been operating in Nigeria for the last 20 years and our philosophy is partnership. This has worked very well in Nigeria. In terms of employment, we have a further philosophy of employing local management and local staff to ensure that we are able to get a proper understanding of what happens in a country. It is wrong for us to stand back and an assume that the entire continent is the same. This is because each country has its own peculiarities. From the investment perspective, we have done a lot in 20 years. We have set up multiple offices and we have been running the satellite business. The satellite business creates employment opportunities, both direct and indirect. You have installers, the informal retailers and sellers as well as the super dealers.

    Running an operation like MultiChoice Nigeria creates a lot of opportunities in the country. Over and above that, we have also developed the industry quite significantly. Let’s take content development, for instance. We have set up studios in the country. The setting up of studios has provided a springboard for new content development. This has helped Nollywood and assisted the export of its products to the other parts of the continent. We have invested in studios like the M-Net Studio and the Supersport Studio. We also have plans to expand the studios to ensure the set-up is much bigger.

    In technology, we are very proud of what we have done. We started way back in the 90s with digital satellite TV. That was a springboard for digital migration. It was our foundation to bring in digital content to Nigeria. It is important for us to be leaders from in technology. That is why we bring the best technology to any country where our services are offered. We invest heavily in new technology.

    We have adopted DVB-T2 standard, which has proved to be the leading technology. We have also brought products like the PVR, which allows our consumers to record content. We have similarly invested heavily in networks. We have launched our mobile services in Nigeria and we continue to set up terrestrial sites all over the country to bring in new technology and make things easier for the consumers to consume content. There are a lot of things we have done over the last 20 years and we continue to improve in terms of our service delivery. We have continued to expand our call centres as well as introduce improved payment methods.

    We appreciate that it is sometimes very difficult for somebody to get to a particular pay point to pay for our service. One thing that is true about Nigeria is the propensity of people to use mobile devices. I am not just talking about smartphone devices, but also audio devices. So, we have been working hard to make payment easier for consumers. This, we are doing along with InterSwitch so that people can make mobile payments. Our drive has always been to make things easier for the consumer and I think we have been relatively successful in achieving that.

    It is believed that the cost of subscription is higher in Nigeria than in other parts of the continent. Why is this so?

    This is not true. I want to use a very good example. Let’s take a decoder which we import into Nigeria. I want to contrast that to, for instance, with East Africa. In East Africa, we want to promote the digital migration. For that, we were exempted from paying import duties on decoders. For the decoders that we bring into Nigeria, we pay 20 per cent import duties. So, you can see the difference. You can see the challenge that I have. On one product, I pay 20 per cent in one country. On that same product in another country, I pay nothing. We have always been keen to work with government. We say to them, for instance, if we are going the way of digital migration, consider also exempting us from import duties. Our business is not the sale of hardware. In fact, we very often would subsidise hardware going into various countries because our business is really about content. So, using that example, you can understand that I have a challenge with what is particular to a country. Now, there are many other taxes.

    But it is important to us bring the price to a level that is attractive to the consumer. As such we don’t have a single price across the continent. We look at all these different dynamics in determining the price. But the price in Nigeria, talking about subscription, is not the highest In Africa, certainly not.. Even then, we continually have been working to keep the price low. One thing I think is very important is content. I buy local content and I also buy international content. International content obviously comes with a price. All these are brought into the offering that we bring to the consumer.

    Shouldn’t the price of your subscription be lower in Nigeria, given its huge population of subscribers?

    It does not exactly work that way. Let’s take CNN for example. I pay per subscriber. If I have a hundred subscribers on this side, I will pay for the hundred subscribers at the same rate that I will pay for, let’s say, 10 subscribers elsewhere. So the fact that we have a much bigger size somewhere does not necessarily mean much. It is not the case that Nigeria will attract a much higher fee per subscriber. Those fees are still the same. The import of a product is almost like a one on one relationship. If I bring decoders into and Nigeria, a much bigger market, I will bring many more decoders into the market. But each decoder still attracts import duty.

    I think the benefit we have in Nigeria is that when you a large subscriber base, some of the overhead costs incurred in the country get reduced. The cost per subscriber is comparatively less in Nigeria than in smaller countries.

    In what country do you have the largest number of subscribers?

    We have completely separated the South African business from the African business. We have completely separated the CEOs. We have a separate CEO for the African business and another for the South African business. We even use different satellites to service the two different businesses. So, the two core structures are completely separated. There are some commonalities like the billing system, but it is quite limited in terms of common cost that we have for the two businesses. The content in Africa is also different from the content we broadcast in South Africa. So we look at the African business as a separate leg from the South African business. Though they have common shareholders, they are completely separate.

    Now, in terms of which of the 50 countries that we operate is our largest market. It is simply determined by the number of consumers that we have in each country. Nigeria is a very big market for us, so we focus on the country. A lot of our investments actually goes to Nigeria. That is why, in terms of studios, it is where our biggest investment lies. In term of network roll-out, that is where we put the most money. I think the fact that we have been in Nigeria for the past 20 years shows that we believe in Nigeria and that is why we continue to invest in the country.

    For a long time, you had the field all to yourself. Now the Chinese are here with StarTimes. What do you make of their arrival?

    We have always welcomed competition and it is a crazy statement to make. What it does is that it makes the industry grow up and that is what we are interested in. The more the players, the more the market and the more opportunity it is for growth in the country. Competition makes the quality of content grow. That is hugely beneficial to us. If you have a very small industry, it is very little content that comes out of it. Competition actually helps the industry to grow and that is exactly what is happening in Nigeria. Nollywood content is growing, so we started AfricanMagic. As it grew, you saw other operators coming on stream and even content providers. It started in Nigeria and now we’ve taken it to the continent. The vision we have is to take around the globe. The stronger the content, the better the industry.

    We have the PVR technology which allows you to record content. We are also going to bring Box Office to Nigeria. Box Office is not only going be international content; I also want to take the best of Nollywood and also put that into the offering. This, again, gives content producers the opportunity to continue to expand. This is what helps the industry to become stronger.

    Many are of the view that you launched GOtv as a response to StarTimes…

    Let me talk a bit about our strategy. If you look back, when we launched our satellite service, it was perceived to be catering for the higher end of the market, with the price ranging from $70 to roughly $100. But there is big component of the market which we still want to address and that component is the low end of the market. It desires a more affordable product, a product much easier to install. I think our plan around GOtv is to make available much affordable product and one that is easier to install. This product will address a much bigger slice of the population.

    How is your organisation coping with the piracy of its content?

    Piracy is something that has been there for a very long time and we are aggressively fighting it. Piracy has evolved overtime from the approach of simply connecting a cable to the highly sophisticated system used to distribute pirated signals. It is quite prevalent in the market. The distribution of pirated signals has also evolved overtime. Now, it has started on mobile devices. But as the pirate has evolved, so have we and we are aggressively attacking what the pirates bring to the market. I think the important thing to understand is that piracy is really bad. It is bad for the industry because if you have piracy in a particular market, it will completely destroy the broadcasting of content in the market. This is because producers will produce content, but will never be able to monitor the content because that content will easily find its way unto a pirate network. And if all the content is for free, it will completely destroy the industry that we actually want to grow. It is fundamental for us to conquer piracy.

    Piracy is almost like a game. It flares up, we bring a counter-measure and it dies down. But again, it flares up and it dies down. What is important is the counter- measures we adopt.

    In Nigeria, movie producers have had cause to complain that they do not get what is due them from the screening of their films. How are you handling this?

    I think the fact that you have seen how AfricaMagic has grown shows you how this has been addressed. We continue to get more and more content from producers. I think producers are very comfortable with working with us in terms of producing content and making it available on our platforms. We have many platforms and as such, they have more opportunities to bring content.

    What has your company done in terms of Corporate Social Responsibility?

    MultiChoice Nigeria is a strong supporter of the Sickle Cell Foundation – Nigeria. We have done many things in terms of giving back to the society. The biggest one is the Multichoice Resource Centre (MRC) project, which we have built in schools and have trained teachers to use them. We have built over 300 of such in 21 states. We also provide content, instructional materials, television sets and TV recorders to ensure that the children learn. Channels like Discovery Channel and History Channel are provided within a framework to enable the training of teachers as well as to get the children educated.

    We have also been part of the ‘Adopt a School’ programme in Lagos State and we continually support several causes around the country.