The digital migration deadline is less than 3 months away and while there are a lot of issues around what that will mean for local content creation and broadcasting, the unanimous agreement is that it is a very positive step that will help local broadcasting to at least catch up with modern trends.
One of the developments in line with this migration is the launch of ZBC Web TV. We got to know about this at the Digital Future Conference held last week, when Gelfand Kausiyo, the man at the helm of the migration project touched on some aspects we can look forward to.
(You can catch the presentation made by Kausiyo by following this link here)
Web TV is essentially a streaming service for anyone who wants to access TV content for specific broadcast channel. A service from another broadcaster similar to this would be BBC iPlayer(which is geo-locked) Simply put, it makes the ZBC Web TV an additional channel, albeit an online one.
This is going to be a huge transition for ZBC, not only terms of creating digital material for this new platform, but also in curating the web content. By entering the web space, ZBC will be getting into direct competition with VOD services which include iROKO, Aflix TV as well as larger providers like Netflix and Apple TV that are “officially unavailable” locally.
The online TV territory has a plethora of challenges that ZBC has to be prepared to deal with (high quality content, internet access, limited market reach, diverse marketing and promotion etc) and considering the fact the corporation is yet to get a complete handle of its own content, even on YouTube and Facebook video, a long and bumpy ride lies ahead.
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