Issue no 83 7 July 2010

Inspired by the growing influence of China in some African countries, the International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) has invited seven filmmakers from South Africa, Cameroon, Uganda, Rwanda, Congo and Angola to make films in China.

The African directors’ films will premiere, along with a contextual film programme, during the Rotterdam’s 40th edition. The programme, titled ‘Raiding Africa’, includes a film workshop produced by the IFFR in collaboration with the Li Xianting Film School in Beijing and supported by Rotterdam’s Hubert Bals Fund. 
  
In 2009 the IFFR undertook an extensive research trip to countries in Eastern and Central Africa. The result was the IFFR 2010 ‘Forget Africa’ programme consisting of the African films found during the research and of thirteen commissioned films by international filmmakers presenting their first view on Africa.

The IFFR did meet many young and talented directors who had learnt filmmaking in small initiatives or collectives. The reasons that they haven’t been picked up internationally were various, but mostly because of a lack of funding, no subtitling and no international network. The films the IFFR showed from these young filmmakers are now being picked up internationally. 
 


The ‘Raiding Africa’ programme aims to stimulate the exchange of cultures, to support the careers of the African directors included in last year’s ‘Forget Africa’, to create a situation in which the Africans are informed about Asian independent low budget filmmaking and to allow them to work internationally. The filmmakers taking part are:
-Omelga Mthiyane, South-Africa (Thank You Mama)
-Emile-Aime Chah Yibain ‘Ancestor’, Cameroon (The Way to the Cross)
-Ssenkaaba Samson 'Xenson', Uganda (Creation Lab)
-Caroline Kamya, Uganda
-Yves Montand Niyongabo, Rwanda (Maibobo)
-Amour Sauveur, Congo-Brazzaville (Coupable)
-Henrique Narciso ‘Dito’, Angola (A guerra do Ku-Duro)

During the Li Xianting Film School workshop in Beijing the seven young African filmmakers will be teamed up with experienced Asian Chinese-speaking filmmakers. The mentors taking part are Chinese filmmakers Ying Liang (Taking Father Home) and Sheng Zhimin (Night of an Era), Beijing Film Academy teacher Zhang Xianmin, Tiger Award winning Thai filmmaker Anocha Suwichakornpong (Mundane History), Singaporean filmmaker Sherman Ong (Flooding in the Time of Drought) and China-based Dutch filmmaker David Verbeek (RU There).

Nigerian free-to-air TV channel STV is to significantly upgrade its offering for kids, tweens and teens thanks to a new content deal with MTV Networks Africa that brings quality programming from iconic TV brand Nickelodeon to STV television viewers throughout Nigeria.

STV viewers in Lagos, Port Harcourt, Benin, Awka and Jos will now be able to tune in to a daily dose of world-class kids’ TV - sourced from kids’ entertainment powerhouse, Nickelodeon.

Starting from Friday 16 July 2010, Nickelodeon programming will become a daily fixture on STV; featuring for an hour every day Monday to Friday in an after-school block between 4 pm and 5 pm (Nigeria local time).  On Saturdays, Nickelodeon programming will air in the early morning slot between 8 am and 9 am (Nigeria local time).  

STV’s Nickelodeon blocks will be jam-packed with fun, animated programming for the 2 to 15 age group, all characterised by Nickelodeon’s distinctive kids-centric point of view.  Key shows at launch will include pre-school favourite Dora the Explorer, Go, Diego, Go!, comic epic adventure series Avatar and SpongeBob SquarePants, the global undersea entertainment phenomenon that has captured hearts around the world. 

Balancing Act has revamped its website to make it more engaging, flexible and professional. After a year of part time work for five team members, the new site was launched in its beta version at the start of June 2010. Three major changes were put in place with the following objectives in mind: easier navigation, more intuitive, better design, and new sections.

Firstly, Balancing Act’s two websites - http://www.balancingact-africa.com/ and http://www.afridigital.net - have been merged into one. With convergence between telecoms and audiovisual content currently taking place in Africa, this move made a lot of sense. To avoid stored cookies’ issues for regular readers, the “broadcast, film, convergence” site’s url is automatically redirected to the main site: http://www.balancingact-africa.com/.

Secondly, the new site changed its look to a more intuitive, colourful and harmonious design aiming at attracting and keeping a large audience.

Thirdly, the way articles are shown allows for more space and better targeted locations for advertisers. Isabelle Gross, in charge of the project explained: “Banners for a specific company can now be placed on related stories using specific tags. i.e. a South African telecoms company can chose to place a banner on all articles related to words such as telecoms, VoIP, data centres, South Africa, access, etc.”

Content-wise, the company gets an increasing flow of daily press releases and announcement across all African countries. The priority has been placed on innovations, significant announcements impacting the African market and stories prompting new ventures and more entrepreneurship in Africa.
The search engine, one of the most used sites’ features has been improved and is located under the News section. Going back since the site was launched, all news’ archives have been added to the new site and are available to readers for free.

Russell Southwood, CEO of the company added: “Balancing Act’s website is read by about over 20,000 readers a month on average. We hope that the new site should increase readership by 50% over the next few years and there are early signs that traffic has already increased. ”

Balancing Act editors remind companies and individuals active in the African telecoms and audiovisuals industries to send related messages and press releases to: (editorial @ balancingact-africa.com)
for publication on its new site and e-letters.

According to the latest stats from Nielsen, it does appear that people have been taking time off work to watch the 2010 FIFA World Cup. The average TV audience for time-period 1pm-3.30pm has grown by over half a million people.
For the past six months the average audience for this time period was 5.1 million viewers - and it's grown to 5.8 million. According to SAARF TAMS, 1.1 million "day-time" viewers are watching soccer - excellent for "gees", but interesting in terms of costs to companies.

Here are the 10 most-watched games:

The highest percentage reach per country measured so far is 50.4%, or 28 915 million Italian fans watching their team come up against Paraguay on 14 June. Coming off a far larger population base, 10.2% reach of the US audience meant 29 730 million Americans watched the USA versus England game. With 34.8% of South African rooting for Bafana against Mexico, this result is not far behind South Korea's 47.4% reach (13 815 million) during their match against Argentina.
 
Interestingly, of all the games played to date, the France vs Uruguay match had the smallest local audience - only around 600 000 South Africans broke away from their post-SA-Mexico game euphoria to watch this game. All other games shown here have exceeded an audience of 3.5 million (SAARF TAMS). Nielsen confirmed on July 1st. That the World Cup Reached One-Third of All U.S. TV Viewers.

On a separate note, Nielsen issued information related to advertisers over the event.
In June 2010, Nielsen reported that  Nike “ambushed” its way into the World Cup conversation by producing a popular soccer-themed ad that spread virally across the online community. The company’s efforts in the days and weeks leading up to the World Cup pushed its competitor and official tournament partner Adidas into the background of online conversations.

Since the start of the opening kickoff, though, Adidas has reasserted itself at the top of World Cup brand dialogue. When looking at the top 10 official sponsors and their major competitors, a follow-up study by NM Incite, a Nielsen McKinsey Company, found that in the first two weeks of the tournament Adidas overtook Nike as the top brand. Adidas buzz accounted for 25.1% share of World Cup buzz online compared to 14.4% before the event. Nike, meanwhile, dropped from 30.2% to 19.4%.

Part of Adidas’ increased buzz levels were due to discussions around the controversial official ball of the World Cup – the Jabulani. For the week ending the 13th June, which included the first three days of the tournament, the ball accounted for 8% of all English-language messages related to the World Cup.

HIGHEST SHARE OF ONLINE WORLD CUP BUZZ IN FIRST TWO WEEKS*
(Sponsors vs. Competitors)

Rank - Brand Type - % Share of Official and Competitor Buzz*
1 Adidas FIFA Partner 25.1%
2 Nike Non-affiliated Competitor 19.4%
3 Coca-Cola FIFA Partner 11.0%
4 Sony FIFA Partner 9.8%
5 Budweiser FIFA Partner 4.9%
6 Hyundai/Kia FIFA Partner 4.7%
7 Visa FIFA World Cup™ Sponsor 4.7%
8 McDonald’s FIFA World Cup™ Sponsor 4.2%
9 Pepsi Non-affiliated Competitor 2.8%
10 Carlsberg Non-affiliated Competitor 2.4%

While government is debating whether to use the Japanese or the European standard when the country moves over to digital television, the debate could cost the country dearly in lost opportunities and wasted investment.

In April, the department decided to review SA's decision to implement the European DVB standard, introducing a Brazilian adaptation of the Japanese ISDB standard as a possible alternative.
Click here

Two of the country's largest set-top box manufacturers have warned that the delays will set back the manufacturing process by at least a year, and small manufacturers could miss out on an opportunity to sell their wares to an African market.

South Africa is in the midst of a changeover period from analogue broadcasting and has been testing digital broadcast systems in preparation for turning off the old analogue signal. The original go-live date was set for next November, in anticipation of global switchover in November 2015. However, that date was cast aside, apparently because industry was not ready, and no new date has yet been set.

Tiyani Rikhotso, department of communications spokesman, says the “review of the standard is currently under way”, but did not provide any timeframes as to when the country's manufacturers can expect clarity.

Bertus Bresler, who heads up Reunert's set-top box project, says the company is still designing boxes and has received much interest from Africa, after 2,500 of its boxes were successfully used during the SABC's trials in 2008.

He says once a technology standard has been decided upon, it will take between three to six months to design a new set-top box product. From the date of the first order the company receives to go ahead and manufacture, it will take another nine months before set-top boxes will be on shop shelves. However, in the meantime, the country is being left behind, says Bresler, as many other African countries are already starting to switch on digital.

Nigeria’s leading film producers will be showcasing their latest productions at this year’s Broadcast & Film Africa Conference, to be held in Nairobi over 28-29 July.

AITEC Africa, the event organiser, has announced an exciting programme, including a Nollywood Pavilion in the exhibition running alongside the conference. Over 20 Nollywood film-makers will participate in the conference, to promote their products to broadcasters and distributors that will be attending the event from throughout Africa. Nigerian films have become increasingly popular among East African TV viewers.

The conference will include a session entitled “After Nollywood, what next? – African film distribution across the continent”. Speakers on this topic include Imruh Bakari, Savannah Films, Tanzania; Lola Sanusi, Director of Operations, Continental TV;  Trushna Buddhev Patel, GM Africa, Pan-African Film Distributors; Wanuri Kahiu, Film-maker; Professor Emevwo Biakolo, Dean, School of Media & Communications, Pan-African University, Nigeria; Mike Dearham, Head M-Net Library Acquisition and Sales

Over 60 African and international broadcast and film leaders will make presentations on a wide range of broadcast and film industry topics in the two day conference, sharing knowledge and experience with industry managers and professionals from throughout the continent.

For full details of the conference email info@aitecafrica.com or log on to www.aitecafrica.com

Taking place at the Grand Palm Hotel, Casino and Convention Resort, Gaborone, Botswana from Sunday 22 August 2010 to Wednesday 25 August 2010, the Pamro event will feature “Strong Foundation Amidst Waves of Change” as the conference theme.

The Conference will start on Sunday, 22 August with registration late afternoon followed by a welcome dinner.  Registration will continue on Monday 23 August (full day conference). Tuesday 24 August (full day conference including an LSM Workshop and a networking opportunity) followed by a Boma in the evening.  Wednesday 25 August will be a half day conference so that delegates can leave after lunch.

As usual, updates on media audience research activities from countries from all parts of Africa will be given and this will be complemented by a comprehensive summary of media research in member countries which will be supplied on CD to all attendees.

Presentations will address a wide range of subjects such as the change to Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT), a report on audience measurement during the Soccer World Cup, media research lessons gained in Botswana and Angola over the past number of years and issues arising from doing online research in Nigeria.
 
In addition interesting new viewpoints will be explored such as the idea of Priority Modelling as a more effective predictive tool than actual behaviour, and how diary data has changed the media industry in Ghana specifically with regards to media buying.
Speakers that will present are from Angola, Botswana, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa and the UK. They include:

Candice Ulrich, Research and Panel Manager, AGBNielsen, South Africa
Cecilia Patterson, MTC Marketing Research Solutions, Botswana
Filipa Oliveira, Managing Director, Marktest Angola
Keld Nielsen, Global Business Development Director, TNS Media Research, United Kingdom
Liz Pillay, Media Manager Africa, Starcom Worldwide Africa
Margit Cleveland, Director, Infinite Insight Ltd., Nigeria
Patson Gasura, Managing Consultant, Topline Research Solutions, South Africa
Razaaque Animashaun, Managing Director, Business Interactive consultinG
Sifiso Falala, CEO, Plus 94 Research, South Africa

Confirmation from 7 or 8 leading experts from across the continent is awaited and a more complete list of speakers as well as a first provisional programme will follow shortly.
 
Below please find the provisional programme which is still subject to change.
The conference costs and registration forms can be found on the PAMRO website: www.pamro.org

Since the beginning of October 2009 and by government law, Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT) is available in Gabon. In a country of 1.5 million inhabitants, Gabon becomes the 4th country in Africa equipped with DTT (called Télévision Numérique Terrestre in French) after South Africa, Morocco and Kenya. Gabon is also the first central African country equipped with DTT.

DTT has been rolled out to 300,000 households – including 140, 000 in Libreville - that used to receive the Gabonese national channels in lower quality analogue signal.
Today, thanks to this new network, one just needs to be equipped with an antenna (already owned by 90% of households in Libreville, the capital) and a DTT decoder to be able to access Gabon and international channels in digital quality with a stereo sound.

TNT Africa, in charge of the project took into account the average budget of an average household in Gabon to implement its public prices. Thus, the company offers packages ranging from CFA francs 1,500 per month (2.30 euros) to CFA francs 2,500 (3.80 euros). Depending on the package subscribed, customers have access to five information channels or up to 14 international channels. The DTT box price starts at about CFA francs 50,000. Edgard Togouma, CTO of Digital TV, main distributor of DTT boxes in Gabon confirmed “30 channels in digital quality are priced at CFA francs 100.00. Beyond these basic 30 channels you have the opportunity to purchase additional subscriptions for a higher price.”

The Gabonese government gains two thing out of DTT deployment: national channels are broadcast in high quality and the population can access international channels at lower price (less need to purchase a satellite set up to get international channels), enabling more liberalisation and freedom. The move will also eliminate the number of satellite aerials which have in some areas polluted the landscape.

FIFA has set up a distribution partnership with SONY, Ster-Kinekor and Nu-Metro cinemas around the world so that soccer fans can enjoy key matches on 3D.

Ster-Kinekor's 3D world cup games have been shown on a six-metre screen at outlets such as Sandton (Johannesburg), Cavendish (Cape Town), Brooklyn (Pretoria), The Bridge (Port Elizabeth) and Gateway (Durban). Ster-Kinekor charges R100 for group stages matches and R120 for quarter-finals. The semi-finals and third place match fee is R140, while the final on Sunday will cost R200 per person.

In association with Supersport and DStv, Nu Metro Cinemas have been screening 18 selected FIFA WC matches LIVE in 3-D at the following 14 Nu Metro cinemas:
Emperors Palace, Montecasino, Clearwater Mall, The Glen, Bedford Centre,
Hyde Park, Menlyn Park, The Pavilion, Galleria, V&A Waterfront, Canal Walk,
Riverside Mall, Loch Logan and Walmer Park.
Nu Metro Cinemas have offered attendees to book tickets online.

The ticket price for 3-D movies does not include the cost of 3-D glasses, which  viewers need to watch Nu Metro Cinemas digital 3-D films. 3-D glasses are available at the cinema ticket box and concessions counter for R 5 and can be kept for next time.
Nu Metro fees:
Date     Match       Teams             Venue Price
Sat 10  Jul 63        Uruguay vs. NL    CPT    R 120
Sun 11 Jul 64       WC FINAL        JSC     R 200

Sean Cameron Michael who hails from Cape Town appears on M-Net this June in the true life drama, Natalee Holloway, about a teenager who vanished in 2005 while visiting Aruba on a senior class trip and her mother’s relentless effort to discover the truth behind her daughter’s disappearance.  Michael plays Paul van der Sloot, the father of 22-year old Dutch playboy, Joran van der Sloot, who was twice arrested in connection with the schoolgirl's disappearance. The film was directed by Mikael Salomon.

Uzanenkosi Mahlangu and Zamaneini Mkhwanazi are overjoyed after being informed mid June 2010 that they were selected for the MultiChoice Film Talent Incubator, a programme to fast-track the development of existing industry talent, specifically previously disadvantaged individuals.  Both candidates can look forward to six months of training that will be especially designed to meet their individual requirements. The training involves developing two original pieces of work under the guidance and mentorship of industry specialists, as well as an international visit to attend a workshop. Thereafter the candidates will be back to South Africa to work on their film production.

Lulama Mokhobo, group executive for public broadcasting services (PBS) at the SABC, has resigned after 5 years in the company. The national broadcaster announced that her departure came into effect on Wednesday, 30 June 2010. Mokhobo headed all the PBS radio and television channels.