Ethiopia’s main private and public television broadcasters signed agreements with the Luxembourg-based satellite operator SES in July 2019 to move their channels to a dedicated Ethiopian package on the NSS-12 satellite at 57 degrees East. SES said the new line-up, carried on its East Africa digital TV platform, would launch in August 2019.
One agreement was with the Association of Ethiopian Broadcasters (AEB), whose 14 members included EBS, Fana Broadcasting, Walta TV, Arts TV, Afrihealth, OBS, LTV, Kana, JTV, DWTV, Asham TV, Ahadu TV, Nahoo TV and the Ministry of Education. SES said these members together controlled more than half of Ethiopia’s TV audience. A separate agreement with the state Ethiopian Broadcasting Corporation (EBC) covered public and regional channels, including ETV News, ETV Entertainment, ETV Languages, OBN TV, Tigray TV, South TV and Amhara TV. Most of the content was to be broadcast in high definition.
The move addressed a long-running problem for Ethiopian viewers. More than 4 million Ethiopian households watched television by satellite, and most of the local channels sat on an orbital position that also served the Middle East and North Africa, mixed in with international content, SES said. Grouping Ethiopian channels in one place was meant to make them easier to find and help build a stronger advertising market for free-to-air TV. SES also said 16 million Ethiopian homes had no TV service at all.
“We are at a critical juncture in Ethiopia. We want to harness the momentum for change and create a truly Ethiopian TV neighbourhood that will deliver local content to viewers in high quality, and fuel growth in the Ethiopian media sector,” said Amman Fissehazion, chairman of the AEB. Belete Esubalew Gemberie, deputy chief executive of EBC, said SES had opened an East Africa office in Addis Ababa and was training local technicians to install dishes.
The migration depended on millions of dishes being repointed to the new satellite. SES said its local team would train installers to do the work and that technical details would follow.
Sources: SpaceNews (SES), Via Satellite, Addis Standard