Tag Archives: IBC

Econet receives IBC prize

Econet Media picked up this year’s Judges’ Award at the IBC media, entertainment and technology convention in Amsterdam this month.

Michael Lumley

The company was chosen for its effectiveness in pioneering mobile TV and OTT in South Africa through its streaming service, Kwesé Play. This was made possible by various partnerships with technology firms.

Kwesé Play uses technology from Roku and offers access to content like You Tube, Netflix and other channels. Other tech contributors include Verimatrix, for content security, and AWS Elemental, for coding.

Michael Lumley, chair of the IBC judging panel, said: “In our discussions, we recognised that the way the technology partners had collaborated on this project was innovative and successful, but we also felt that the outcome transcended the technology, delivering social change by connecting local people to global content.”

Econet Media is now able to transport its services through its content delivery network with the help of sister company Liquid Telecom. Mobile and broadband networks can access OTT content at low latency across central and southern Africa.

Kwesé Play has content partnerships with more than 150 studios and distributors worldwide, including Disney, Warner Bros, Paramount, NBC Universal, Fox, CBS, BBC, Sony Pictures and Discovery.

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NBC fines nets for code breaches

Nigeria’s National Broadcasting Commission (NBC) has issued fines to two TV stations, ITV in Jalingo and IBC (Orient TV) in Owerri, for breaching the country’s broadcasting code.

Maimuna Jimada

The channels were fined N100,000 and N50,000, respectively.

NBC’s head of public affairs Maimuna Jimada said the stations were being penalised for their breach of the Nigeria Broadcasting Code and for airing programmes that feature vulgar lyrics, hate speech and unverifiable claims.

According to Jimada, all of these breaches were committed in the third quarter of 2017. Poor training of staff and editors was partly to blame for these breaches of ethics and the broadcast code, the NBC exec added.

Many staff at the stations are either untrained or undertrained and don’t know which words, videos and claims are off-limits for broadcast, leading to uncensored music videos, talkshows and movies that breach the broadcasting code.

Part of NBC’s duty is to organise regular training and refresher courses for staff at TV stations.

Speaking at a press conference, Nigeria’s Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, said: “The nation looks up to the NBC to restore sanity to the broadcasting industry. The Commission cannot afford to do any less at this critical time. It cannot afford to fail the nation.”

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