MultiChoice Africa Holdings on Wednesday donated modern equipment worth Sh36 million to the Kenya Broadcasting Corporation (KBC) to help it improve television signal quality countrywide.
Speaking during the handover of the equipment, KBC Acting Managing Director Samuel Maina said the Media Asset Management System (MAMS) and Newsroom Management System (NMS) will go a long way in complementing investments the corporation has put in place to improve its audio and video in order to achieve High Definition signal nationwide for its three television channels led by flagship brand, KBC Channel 1, Y254 and Heritage TV.
The MAMS is also backed to help KBC in content generation, editing, storage, transmission and archiving.
“The Media Asset Management System will centralize media and media operations in one repository. This will also give a boost to the digitization process of our archived material,” said Maina.
According to Maina, the new system will also help KBC generate new revenue streams by commercializing archived material in digital formats given the growth of video-on-demand.
“We have used some small part of content on TV from our archivesand there are people who are waiting for that segment on our TV. We are going to monetize that. For instance, if you would like to see the speech of the late Mzee Jomo Kenyatta, you will use your m-pesa, go to the system and watch the whole of it then pay some small amount of money. That is a revenue stream that is lying here. What we are going to do is when we get enough space, we get the archive, we digitize because people want to watch the content from wherever they are,” added Maina.
On her part, Multichoice Kenya Managing Director Nancy Matimu said his organization is committed to helping KBC deliver the best quality local content to consumers through its DSTV and GoTV platforms.
“We now want to go a step further and ensure that as a strong partner we help you have the best quality in terms of delivery of the most important content currently consumed by Kenyans. I am sure that once we launch these equipment and eventually launch the studio, we shall see a remarkable difference and improvement,” said Matimu.
Matimu further added that the firm will deploy a team of its international engineers to support KBC in auditing the signal.
Multichoice currently has a reach of one million households in Kenya with more than 2000 service centres across the country.
The systems are further backed to help the corporation automate its workflow through shared storage workflow servers.
“Besides the regular news production capabilities, the system will offer advanced collaborative planning, social media workflows, Artificial Intelligence functionalities and state-of-the-art integration with studio automation systems,” added George Kagoru, Director for Business Development at Broadcast Business Solutions (BSI), the firm which will be responsible for training KBC staff on handling the new systems as well as ensure integration.
Maina further assured viewers of high-quality end-to-end communication from KBC through its TV, radio and digital platforms by providing factual and balanced news as the country heads towards the general election slated for August 9, 2022.
