Entrant aims to wow

Johannesburg, 25 Sept 2007

Walking on Water TV, the smallest of the five companies recently awarded a pay-TV licence, will begin life as a single-channel broadcaster, and will hit the market at R49 per month.

This is according to CEO Nontokozo Mangquku, revealing some of the new operator's strategy. Walking on Water is the smallest of the five licensees - behind the mainstream, multi-channel contenders MultiChoice, Telkom Media, On Digital Media and e.sat.

"When one talks of a Christian-based broadcaster, some people immediately think of another 24-hour church channel. This is not the approach that Walking on Water is following - we will have comedies, movies, kids and youth programmes, talk shows, game shows, reality shows, and documentaries.

"But all of this has to pass the test, a test that Christ should give each and every programme that we broadcast a thumbs-up."

Mangquku says although it will start as a single channel offering, Walking on Water should expand into a multi-channel broadcaster "as soon as we are able to attract the right content and we have built sufficient muscle to take additional channels".

She believes it will tap into a new market in SA, saying it will be a national first for a TV station to focus concurrently on nation building and providing complete entertainment.

Initially, much of the content will be imported, due to the high costs of producing local content. In time, this will change towards more home-grown programming.

Incumbent operator MultiChoice may be forced to share its set-top-box and satellite dish infrastructure with its new rivals (including Walking on Water), although the broadcast giant has said it will fight this stipulation.