STARSAT’S David Makubyane made the network’s presence felt at the recent Durban International Film Festival (DIFF).
And it was the perfect playground to network and procure content. Known as TopTV before it suffered financial difficulties, StarSat’s dark cloud is clearing up. And they are producing more content as well as procuring it. Not forgetting adding channels as they go along – ID Extra, which is from Discovery Networks, being a case in point. That’s not forgetting the three Nollywood channels they also added.
Tonight caught up with Makubyane at DIFF and he revealed: “Because this is the coming together of industry players, locally and inter-nationally, this was a good opportunity for us. Also, considering our platform and content goes to Sub-Saharan Africa, this was an opportunity for everyone to talk.
“As you know, StarSat has been under business rescue for some time. But we are getting out of it very soon. And we would like to reintroduce ourselves to the industry. My being here is to talk to the local industry, explain to them that we are still alive and engage with them on what we need, our business models and them giving us content and us obviously then growing.”
The network offers the normal bouquet with 98 channels as well as an Indian and Chinese bouquet.
Makubyane added: “We have been under business rescue for close to two years. But we have new shareholders, we have been looking at new ways of working. Instead of being a South African platform, we are piggybacking on partners who have platforms in the rest of Africa. We dropped three channels when were tightening our offerings.”
But change, for the better, is afoot at StarSat.
He noted: “As a film person, there was a lot of content showcasing (at DIFF) that we want to hopefully get for our channels. I have seen some local African films and documentaries that we can carry on our platforms. Hopefully, we can license it.”
His responsibility entails overseeing five of the local channels on offer: two being movie offerings, one a general entertainment channel, another a lifestyle offering and the fifth being a gospel channel.
He revealed: “We want content on prime time to be fresh. For the movie channels, we have the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. We have just got the 007 seasons…right up to Quantum of Solace. We have a Disney deal, with movies like Tango. In fact, we try to make sure there are about four Disney blockbusters over the weekend. They might not be the new releases but, looking at the target audience, who have never had access to Pay-TV or those who have been living in communities with no access to movies, they would appreciate those titles.
“We have a good relationship with Videovision Entertainment. We have just done a second selection from them. They have a nice catalogue of African content. We also have a relationship with Seed Entertainment, who will be providing local and American content. We need to make sure that we have relevant and entertaining content. It is also about evergreen content. Take the movie The Pursuit of Happyness, for example. It’s still a good movie even though it’s not recent.”
StarSat are also producing local content. Two of their flagship offerings include David Kau’s House and Puppet Nation ZA.
“The aim is to do more local comedy. We also signed a deal with DV8 Films for local movies and drama series. In September we will be launching our own telenovela. And we have two more that we have committed to.
“And we have great content coming from ITV’s lifestyle channel, BBC and Fox.”
It looks like the network is finally orbiting its way back into being a contender in the industry!