analysis
By Onimisi Alao
EbonyLife TV turned 3 on July 1, 2016, with an in-house party where its founder Mo Abudu spoke on the journey so far and plans for the future.
Media entrepreneur, Mo Abudu, said of her outfit as it celebrated its 3rd anniversary, “EbonyLife TV has expanded its operations to Lagos, where all our daily and entertainment shows are now produced, but Calabar remains home to EbonyLife TV, which has now become our drama production hub. I assure you of many great and exciting drama series.”
The Cross River State capital, Calabar, which had become famous as an entertainment centre, became more so three years ago when Ebonylife TV, described as Africa’s First Global Black Multi-Broadcast Network, was born there.
“We believe it’s time for Africa to tell its own story, from its own perspective. We believe it’s time to present a different Africa; one never seen before. Welcome to EbonyLife TV,” the establishment stated those three years ago.
And driving content along its vision, ‘To be the preferred global network for premium African entertainment,’ the cable television house has etched a global presence that gets talked about.
“EbonyLife TV has the recipe for making TV stars,” a showbiz personality and Chief Executive of Chocolate City, Jude Abaga, asserted at a recent event.
And as Forbes magazine would put it, ‘EbonyLife TV is established and positioned as Africa’s first Global Black Entertainment Network, engaging like never before, and talking to especially the youths of Africa, the custodians of the present and of the future.”
EbonyLife TV has entertainment as its star programming, with EL Now as a daily magazine show which projects pan-African showbiz, lifestyle and celebrity news; a collection of entertainment reports, celebrity buzz, music, movies, fashion, beauty, design, arts and culture; a 30-minute programme.
There is Hello Africa, a Lifestyle programme and the latest addition to EbonyLife TV’s selection of black entertainment and lifestyle programming, designed to offer interviews with inspirational, successful African celebrities. Hello Africa is produced and hosted by Eunice Omole, who is expected to follow in the footsteps of EbonyLife boss, Mo Abudu, who hosts Moments with Mo.
The EbonyLife TV similarly thrives on Drama and Comedy, two programme areas for which Nigeria, with the ever expanding Nollywood, supplies a surfeit of materials.
Game Show, otherwise termed the Newlywed Game, is a game show that tests newly married couples in a series of questions to determine how well the spouses know or do not know each other.
On its stream of programmes under Religion is Heart of the Matter, a Christian show that comes up at 12 noon every Sunday and looks at the issues in the family and society and proffers biblical solutions.
The Crunch is a news programme described as a fresh offering about what matters to Africa & Africans, ‘A different approach to the news where we scan Africa’s top news publications for the most progressive, upbeat news and human interest stories and report them back to you.’
And there is Talk, a talk show programme with Moments with Mo as its flagship presentation. Moments with Mo can in a good sense be described as the forerunner of the EbonyLife TV itself. Moments with Mo it was that launched Mo Abudu, its chief host, into the limelight as a television personality when the programme reached its audiences mostly via the Nigeria Television Authority (NTA) and African Independent Television (AIT), long before she established the EbonyLife TV.
EbonyLife TV began broadcasting on July 01, 2013 to a pan-African audience, by a license agreement with Multichoice (DStv) Africa. The EbonyLife TV programmes, distributed on DSTV Chanel 165, get to 49 African countries.
Ranked as one of the most watched channels on the DStv platform by its target demographics comprising youths and women, EbonyLife TV annually produces over 1000 hours of homegrown Anglo-African entertainment programming.
Beyond Africa, as the TV company says on its website, EbonyLife TV continues to secure distribution deals across the globe. It says, “In the UK, we are available to viewers on both Talk Talk TV and Lebara Play; we serve viewers in Canada via the Ethnic Channels Group. We are concluding terms with Virgin Media and DISH, while our VOD platforms are also available for download by viewers in the US, Europe, Canada, Asia and the Middle East on Play Store for Android devices and on App Store for iOS devices, as well as at vod.ebonylifetv.com.”
Narrating the path to the television network, Mo Abudu said in an interview, “I would say that the dream was birthed when in 2006, after a successful career working as a HR executive at ExxonMobil, I decided I wanted to have my own Talk Show. I had no TV or media experience whatsoever, but it was the adventurous soul in me that kept me going. It was also a dream that had been deeply rooted, waiting to come out of confinement because media has always been my passion. Who was instrumental? Absolutely everyone, friends, family and associates who stood by me and supported me, those who I would call at 12 am because I had just had a striking realization.”
With the catchphrase, ‘Everything you think you know about Africa is about to change forever,’ EbonyLife TV works to sell the good images of Africa to change fixed but often wrong impressions about Africa. Mo Abudu once told the Associated Press during an interview, “Not every African woman has a pile of wood on her head and a baby strapped to her back!”
A product of EbonyLife TV that has brought further fame to both the TV establishment and its brain, Mo Abudu, is the feature film entitled FIFTY, a box office hit produced by EbonyLife Films, a unit of EbonyLife TV, said to have grossed N400 million by March this year after a four-month cinema run, and other revenue generating streams, that began in December last year.
The movie set up, a week in the lives of four African women approaching the age of Fifty, played by Nollywood actresses Ireti Doyle, Dakore Akande, Nse Ikpe-Etim and Omoni Oboli, has motivated a second feature film entitled, The Wedding Party, and scheduled for the cinemas at Christmas this year.
Towards its third year in existence, as Mo Abudu disclosed, EbonyLife TV expanded its operational bases beyond Calabar, but Drama, one of the genres on the establishment, is at the Tinapa Resort in Calabar, where major drama series gets produced all year round. The drama series include The Governor, Desperate Housewives Africa, Cinderella, Dynasty and Melrose Place.
As it turned 3 on July 1, 2016, EbonyiLife TV held an in-house staff party in Lagos. It was a celebration of the people who had made the cable television establishment what it had been since its launch in 2013.
The EbonyLife TV founder and Chief Executive, Mo Abudu, more fully known as Mosunmola Abudu, was born in the United Kingdom (UK) on September 11, 1964, but her family relocated to Lagos when she was seven, and she was taken to her grandparents in Akure, Ondo State, where she attended the Fiwasaye Girls Grammar School. At 12, shortly after her father died, Abudu returned to the UK and attended various schools, obtaining in the end a master’s degree in HR Management from the University of Westminster, London.
Apart from initiating Moments with Mo, Mo Abudu is also well known for creating and producing The Debaters, a reality TV show aimed at ‘giving Africa a voice’ by promoting oratory, and launched on October 3, 2009, by which time over 200 episodes of Moments with Mo had been recorded and aired.
Mo Abudu who has been described as Africa’s Oprah Winfrey, said during the 3rd anniversary ceremony of EbonyLife TV, that the three-year journey had been fruitful, revealing that the TV house had created over 3000 hours of premium quality home-grown programming in its variety of genres.
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