Yolisa Phale expresses that we are living in the golden age of video entertainment and as one of our key areas of focus, we are able to give our... | By MultiChoice Group | Yolisa Pache it's great to see you here in Dubai. I must start with asking about how competitive the video entertainment landscape is. I mean the content is everywhere and everybody is a content creator. So how has MultiChoice really set the wheels in motion to be the best. Well I'm sure I'm not the first person to say this but I genuinely believe that we are living through the golden age of television. Video entertainment I think particularly enough where statistics show we watch up to twice as much TV and you know YouTube and all of the rest of the things than anywhere else in the world. Wow. Means that for our company this is just a really wonderful opportunity to double down on our local content plans because we firmly believe and our audiences are telling us that they want to see more local shows in more of the languages which they speak and for us this is a dream come true. This is what we've been doing for over 30 years and as I said now we really really going to ramp up and have huge plans to be the most loved African storyteller of all time. I mean let's talk about the actual sheer scale. Across the continent. It's something like 42 channels. So we have yeah around like anywhere between 35 and 40 local channels at any time on our platform. We have the sort of general entertainment channels and Sunsi Magic, Africa Magic and these are really the sort of destination channels for our viewers and our subscribers and then of course now with Showmax where again producing a lot of amazing local stories so most recently we had a wonderful documentary series which had incredible reviews. It was called Devil's Dorp. We've also had Big Brother Nigeria on Showmax and our big big earlier this year was The Real Housewives of Durban. You've really mentioned so many of the shows that I've been binging. Um I mean Devil's Dorp just set social media social spaces alight. It was incredible. So does this mean there's more of a plan to let African people see our own African stories reflected back to us. I believe you call it hyperlocal. We do call it hyperlocal because I mean we have so many languages and we're also producing programming for so geographies. You know we have learnt over the years that the Swahili spoken in Kenya is not necessarily the same Swahili that's spoken in Tanzania. So to really resonate with our subscribers and our viewers it has been you know a conscious decision to do what we call hyper local programming. So this really is a serious commitment by MultiChoice. Is this more that we're going to see in 2022 and beyond? Well that really exciting thing is actually that not only are our audiences on the continent at home loving our programming but what we've seen is that there's this growing appetite around the world where people are actually you know looking to see stories from other places and I think it possibly started with the Scandinoi and then of course we've seen Turkish programming doing very well and more recently Korean drama is taking the world by storm. So we all now are finding that our our programming is travelling and a big part of what we've been doing is co-production so really big shows Reika being the latest which is now you know on air all over the world I mean I hear it's been broadcast here in the UAE I know that in the UK it's going to be on a big channel there it's been dubbed for HBO in Latin America so we actually you know are now telling South African stories written by South African writers with amazing South African cast and and this is really opening up a whole new world for our industry. Okay, so give us a sneak peek into what we can expect from that point of view, more collaborations, more international but local content in the years to come. So, we're currently in post production with a show called Blood Psalms and it's really a pre-colonial fantasy story set kind of like way you know BC times. Wow. Africa had in this story this amazing kingdom it was technologically advanced and there were all kinds of intrigues and sort of wars and fights and I don't know it's just it's a it's a crazy story it the costumes are amazing it was shot in the Eastern Cape actually with the Eastern Cape Development fund and then we're also working on another show which is called Recipes for Love and Murder and it's shot in the Caru and it's got a famous UK actress with loads of our brilliant South African talent and that will be on MET later this year so yeah like a whole we're really going into development so we're working with producers and writers to really make sure that when we finally you know get these shows into production that they they really like our audiences have never seen anything like it and then as I say we're exposing our talent to you know to the global industry Wasn't this the first year that Survivor was shot on South African soil? Yes and it's incredible actually because you know every time we go into production for a new season of survivor we say where can we go? And we look you know we scour the world for amazing locations and obviously because of COVID you know quite simply wasn't possible to travel but you know in the process we found the most incredible location we shot it in South Africa. I think it was on the Wild Coast. Wild Coast, yes. And it's one of the best seasons ever so it just goes to show sometimes you don't actually realize what you've got.