Television in Tanzania

---

Television is still a pretty new medium in Tanzania, it’s only been going for about 10 years, and therefore it’s still in its infancy. Distribution is pretty good despite the lack of electricity in many parts of the country with generator powered community viewing in the more remote places and classic family viewing (like it used to be in the Western world, when there was only one TV in the household) in the more developed and affluent areas. This means even if you target a TV programme at a specific audience, it’s still quite likely to be watched by a wider audience.

There are quite a few Tanzanian TV stations broadcasting now. The biggest ones are TBC1, the public broadcaster, and ITV, which is run by the Tanzanian Berlusconi, who also owns EATV/Channel 5, The Guardian and a range of other newspapers and a few radio stations. He was clearly inspired by British media, as the ITV and The Guardian logos look very much like the did in the UK. Satellite TV made it’s inroads in Tanzania as well, the most popular Pay-TV offering is the South African MultiChoice, but with package prices starting at US $ 20 per months this is only really affordable for the elite and ex-pats. You have to think, that many Tanzanians have to survive on less than the price of the basic TV subscription!

There isn’t much locally produced content. A lot of airtime is being taken up by hour long branded blocks from international broadcasters (CNN, BBC World, Al Jazera, Deutsche Welle, SABC News and my home channel Cartoon Network), then there are badly dubbed soaps (in American-English) from the Philippines and the ubiquitous South American tele-novellas. Most of the local produced stuff is news, stuffy talk shows and some low budget films and soaps. It’s very difficult for independent production companies, as the payment model is very strange. While in Europe broadcasters pay for content, in Tanzania you have to pay the broadcaster to show your material! If you can find a sponsor, than this can work, but it is very difficult to get the funding beforehand and establish a new show. The few possible sponsors are the mobile phone operators and Pepsi. Besides a few exceptions (i.e. Bongo Star - the Tanzanian version of Pop Idol) this leaves only NGOs with foreign funding to be able to buy into this model - like my organisation.

---

Photos

Tanzania Communications Regulatory Authority
In theory something like OFCOM in the UK, but no one I spoke to seems to be aware of there being a clear regulatory framework in place