DISBOOK - The Africa 2012 Edition - (Page 96)
Disbook AfricA 2012 - Trends and bus i n e ss
yourself. After all, neither US nor European law recognizes the existence of a format, and broadcasters only pay for these rights because they know that if they “stole” other people’s formats, then they could not protect their own. Q: What else is good to know? A: Today, it is also vital that a format can live and work in all audiovisual environments. This is because today’s consumers find content in many different environments, and, above all other reasons, if they find content they like in one environment, that makes it all the more likely that they will look for it in others. So, if they find an online game that engages them and which is derived from a TV show, they are more likely to watch the show. Additionally, making your format as ubiquitous as possible makes it significantly more attractive to an advertiser and also opens many transactional possibilities. Finally, as indicated by the opening statistics of this section, the format business is a crowded business and it is, therefore, vital that your format has every possibility of standing out in this
very crowded market place. Of course, ultimately this is down to the quality of the format. It is crucial that there is a hook—a solid reason for audiences to want to come back to it over and over again. But there are other elements, amongst which the most crucial is accessibility—audiences have to be able to find your format. Association with key brands is a good way of achieving this, as is optimizing search. Q: Let’s say a word about African cinema. Despite the current phenomenon of Nollywood, cinema in postcolonial Africa has had a checkered history. By the mid 1990’s, Africanmade movies accounted for less than 0.1 percent of all films screened in Africa. Thirty-five mm film production has been all but defunct since the 1970’s and 16 mm features number only a handful every year. A: There are many, largely self-fulfilling, reasons for this state of affairs. Many African countries have such a small cinema market from which there is no possibility of recouping the cost of production from local box office alone. Many of these markets are kept small
by the tendency of their governments to place steep taxes on cinema ticks and tariffs on film imports; all of which is compounded by a lack of regional feature film production strategies. Indeed, it is increasingly the case that the success of Nollywood is largely based on transnational production activity with many films shot in Benin, Togo, Niger, Cameroon, Sudan and the Ivory Coast, and the industry benefits from exposure at the annual Nollywood Foundation convention in Los Angeles and the UK’s Afro Hollywood Awards. For these reasons, Africa, in common with many other developing areas of the world, has seen the emergence of “sub-cinema” and a straight-to-video industry. Sub-cinema, in which films are shown in a variety of impromptu locations, is characterized by handshake deals, slim profit margins and piracy. It is also, by its very nature, hard to control, bypassing DVD regional coding and other forms of regulation. Reliable information on the straight-to-video business is hard to obtain, but it is estimated that, in Africa, straight-to-video accounts for around two-thirds of all the titles in the market place.
It has been estimated by Harvard Business School that the worldwide value of the format business between 2005 and 2008 was a staggering E 9.3 billion (US $12 billion), representing just over 40 percent of the all the business done at international television markets such as DISCOP Africa.
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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of DISBOOK - The Africa 2012 Edition
Cover
Foreword - Welcome to Johannesburg!
Content
Conference Program
- English Version
- Version Française
Joburg Vibes
- Street Talks
- Drum Archive
- Made in Maboneng
- The Bioscope
- Faces
First Look
- Watercolors of love - Siri
- Mooz-Lum - Meet the Adebanjo’s
- Irrational Heart - Destiny River
- City of Men - Black hands
Trends & Business
- Made in Africa / Made for Africa
- The titans of laamb
- Inside «Inside Story»
- Ecology of african audiovisual content industry
- Gems from the namibian film collection
- The century of formats
- Great formats will come from Africa
- Partners wanted
- How many people (really) watch TV in Africa?
- Voulez-vous coucher avec moi ?
- Africa’s digital switchover is coming - The question is when ?
- Intelsat’s epic
- China in Africa
- Zee : from a to z
- The Brazilians are coming !
- Against all odds
- Discover Discovery in Africa at Discop Africa
- Television with a purpose - A detailed look at educational television
- Branded Entertainment
- Hot docs-Blue ice, a unique opportunity for African documentary makers
- A solution to Africa’s thorny problem of dubbing costs
- Mission statement
Country report
- ALGERIA
- ANGOLA
- BENIN
- BOSTWANA
- BURKINA FASO
- BURUNDI
- CABO VERDE
- CAMEROON
- CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC
- CHAD
- COMOROS
- DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO
- DJIBOUTI
- EGYPT
- EQUATORIAL GUINEA
- ERITREA
- ETHIOPIA
- GABON
- GAMBIA
- GHANA
- GUINEA BISSAU
- GUINEA CONAKRY
- IVORY COAST / CÔTE D'IVOIRE
- KENYA
- LESOTHO
- LIBERIA
- LYBIA
- MADAGASCAR
- MALAWI
- MALI
- MAURITANIA
- MAURITIUS
- MOROCCO
- MOZAMBIQUE
- NAMIBIA
- NIGER
- NIGERIA
- REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO
- RWANDA
- SAO TOME AND PRINCIPE
- SIERRA LEONE
- SENEGAL
- SEYCHELLES
- SOMALIA
- SOUTH AFRICA
- SOUTH SUDAN
- SUDAN
- SWAZILAND
- TANZANIA
- TOGO
- TUNISIA
- UGANDA
- ZAMBIA
- ZIMBABWE
Speakers
Participants
Index Advertisers
DISBOOK - The Africa 2012 Edition
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