Kicking off the panels at DISCOP Johannesburg 2019 was a session with content buyers and sellers discussing the trends they’re witnessing across their transactions in such markets as South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana, Ethiopia and Ivory Coast.<\/p>\n
African content producer Rapid Blue has projects all over the continent, including Got Talent<\/em> in East Africa, which\u00a0founder and owner Duncan\u00a0Irvine hopes will get picked up again for next year. In Lagos, Nigeria, the company is working on a pair of dramas for an American client. \u201cWe\u2019re casting in Ghana at the moment for Family Feud<\/em> with Steve Harvey as the host,\u201d says Irvine, adding that in South Africa Rapid Blue is working on a mobile-first project, creating 1000 hours of short-form content for mobile.<\/p>\n \u201cMost if not all projects in Africa are ad-funded,\u201d says Irvine. \u201cWe spend much longer putting funding together than making the show. Making the show is the fun part, the end of the equation. A lot of what we get done in the rest of Africa is trying to match what the broadcasters would like to have on-air and what advertisers would like to be attached to and trying to find that sweet spot.\u201d<\/p>\n Andrew Hanlon, CEO of TVC Communications in Lagos, is also looking to find that sweet spot. The goal is \u201cfinding the sweet spot between production link-ups and hookups. If we can find those opportunities, we\u2019re delighted to do them.\u201d A free broadcaster, TVC has two stations\u2014the entertainment channel TVC and the 24-hour news channel TVC News\u2014that together attract 6 million viewers per day. \u201cWe’re the biggest commercial broadcaster in Lagos, the commercial capital of Nigeria,\u201d says Hanlon. \u201cCommercially funded, privately owned. Everything we do revolves around commercial negotiations, being out there fighting for advertising dollars.\u201d<\/p>\n Hanlon points out that the Nigerian market is not the easiest for making broadcasting work at the moment, as the country has only recently come out of a recession.\u00a0As TVC looks to exploit commercial opportunities, it\u2019s focusing on attracting local audiences, with the vast amount of content it produces being produced locally. \u201cIf it\u2019s local, it pulls in big audiences,\u201d says Hanlon, who highlights local drama and an all-female chat show on TVC’s slate. \u201cTelenovelas work but not as well as locally produced drama. News is very big as well; the 24-hour news channel feeds into the entertainment channel. We\u2019re on the hunt to do deals with producers of drama, Nigerian drama, shiny floor as well.\u201d<\/p>\n As for sports, TVC has found the cost prohibitively expensive. But with the big international rights having been freed up in Nigeria, meaning there\u2019s no longer just one player in the market, opportunities could be opening up. \u201cIt\u2019s about making the commercial model fit,\u201d says Hanlon. \u201cHow do we make it work? It\u2019s an expensive game, no pun intended.\u201d<\/p>\n Mandy Roger, managing director of JJL Media, believes that producers in Africa need to concern themselves more with how their content will be exported and how it will appeal to international audiences instead of just focusing on genre and length.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat producers need to be looking at before you even start production and secure funding and ads is to sit down and put a strategy together to allocate funds,\u201d says Roger, who suggests that putting together time-coded scripts, music and effects tracks and marketing packages are essential costs. She believes that there is an appetite for African content, and not just for the Diaspora, but that it needs to be pitched correctly\u2014and that includes not being pitched among hundreds of other titles.<\/p>\n \u201cDon\u2019t just throw your whole catalog at [buyers],\u201d advises Roger. \u201cBuyers get approached how many times a day with people trying to sell? You need to make an impact. Send them something short and sharp. Ask what they want, how many slots do they have, how many episodes.\u201d Roger encourages producers to tailor promos and pitches to buyers\u2019 specifications and have a promo for each title. \u201cThe ones who stand out are the ones who make the effort.\u201d<\/p>\n At Kana TV, a free-to-air satellite television channel in Ethiopia, programming and research manager Rehima Awol has seen the success of Turkish series. \u201cTurkish drama works for Kana very well because of the production quality, storylines, the cultural integrity,\u201d says Awol. Kana TV has also introduced content from Brazil and Mexico and is creating some of its own TV series, with a fourth currently in the works.<\/p>\n As of yet, Kana TV has yet to pick up content from other African markets due to the different culture that exists in its market. The company \u201cis looking to build content that is very original for Ethiopia; everyone is conservative in Ethiopia, whether Christian, Muslim, different ethnic groups. We need a story that relates to everyone,\u201d says Awol, adding that Kana TV wants to \u201cbuild a teenage drama so that we can introduce the values and common culture of Ethiopia.\u201d The company is also looking to make a family drama with family values and a nationalist drama that centers the country\u2019s nationalist feelings.<\/p>\n Awol advises African producers outside of Ethiopia to consider the differences of the Ethiopian audience\u2014its language, its music, its culture\u2014when trying to enter the market.<\/p>\n Sihle Hlophe, a producer and founder of Passion Seed Communications, sees Africa becoming smaller in how the continent\u2019s people are able to interact with one another as well as in seeing many Africans emerging in mainstream American culture. The key to expanding the reach further is getting into the room, according to Hlophe. \u201cWhat\u2019s important for me as an African producer? You don\u2019t often get the chance to go and see the lay of the land,” says Hlophe. \u201cHow many times do I get to go to Hot Docs before my project is really seen? And I can be on the floor and pitch? Those are some of the barriers.\u201d She suggests producers look to the international funding bodies and lean into their distinct voices, as that is what can make a project stand out. And once you start getting opportunities, even if they don\u2019t pan out, they are a way to establish relationships, according to Hlophe.<\/p>\n A licensing and contracts management executive at FilmOne, Ife Idowu touts the company as a leader in content production, financing and distribution for English-language content out of Nigeria and West Africa that works with the likes of Netflix. A co-producer of nine out of ten of the highest-grossing Nollywood films of all time, FilmOne has just launched the first MX4D movie theater screen in West Africa. \u201cAcquiring from Nollywood producers and Nollywood studios, taking this content outside of Nigeria is one of the major goals for us\u2014 making sure these films are not only seen in Nigeria,\u201d says Idowu, who adds that the company is able to take the Indigenous content to the U.S., Canada and Western Europe.<\/p>\n DISCOP Johannesburg is taking place at the Sandton Convention Centre through November 22.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Kicking off the panels at DISCOP Johannesburg 2019 was a session with content buyers and sellers discussing the trends they’re witnessing across their transactions in such markets as South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana, Ethiopia and Ivory Coast.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1033,"featured_media":2021,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69],"tags":[235,453],"class_list":["post-2020","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-top-stories","tag-discop-johannesburg","tag-discop-johannesburg-2019"],"yoast_head":"\n