African Movie Channel Launches in UK
UK TV viewers can now watch African movies on a 24-hour basis. Lola Onigbogi, director of the newly launched African Movie Channel, says there is an "endless" market for African productions in Britain, in particular among African immigrants. Most of the films available on-demand are "Nollywood" productions, from Nigeria's booming movie industry.
African Movie Channel (AMC) has just been launched as a new UK digital TV channel with content on demand. The service is distributed by Homechoice, a British digital home network that delivers video on-demand and digital TV to millions of viewers in the London area.
AMC is the first and only TV channel of its kind outside Africa dedicated solely to top quality African movies. Most films are from Nollywood - third largest film industry in the world after Hollywood and India's Bollywood - but AMC will be airing movies from major African film production houses.
The new African Movie Channel offers British viewers a mix of classic films such as Violated, Osofia in London and Madam Dearest, and new and recent releases starring favourite African actors like Richard Mofe-Damijo, Genevieve Nnaji, Olu Jacobs, Rita Dominic, Ramsey Nouah, Fred Amata and many more.
"To launch the African Movie Channel on Homechoice is a very important and exciting step for us," said Ms Onigbogi from AMC. "Demand for both classic and new release African movies is very high in the UK, where there is a large African population. The opportunities that come with offering African Movies on-demand are endless and we look forward to working alongside Homechoice to create a unique and memorable channel," she added.
Working with partners AMC has been delivered as a Subscription Video On-Demand (SVOD) sub-channel offering for unlimited viewing twenty fresh movies every month, for the price of £9.99, and three Pay-Per-Rental sub-channels (priced from £1.50 a movie for 72 hours viewing), in one channel.
With the absence of a channel dedicated to showing African movies in Europe, the large population of Africans and other consumers of African movies had relied on renting low quality VCDs from local African shops.
The new African Movie Channel has now challenged this situation by making available a Video On-Demand (VOD) offering of quality African programming tailored for on-demand to serve the under-represented African television audience, putting them in total control of what they watch and when they watch.