adminAuthority of Zimbabwe on April 17, to Faithful Marketing as a content distributor.
My TV Zimbabwe chief executive officer Rodgers Chidamwoyo said the top entertainment and lifestyle channel decided to bring its services to Zimbabwe after realising that they was a gap in entertainment for local viewers at a low cost.
“We are agents of My TV based in Lebanon and as part of the arrangement we will be selling decoders (satellite receivers), smart cards and monthly subscription.
“Let me hasten to say that although we started selling them only a few months ago, the response has been overwhelming,” he said.
In order to access My TV subscribers need to buy a special PVR decoder which is selling at US$80 together with the start-up pack.
Their monthly subscriptions are pegged at US$22 for the 18 channels that My TV offers.
Some of the channels include BBC World News, Al Jazeera, kids.co, Trace, Fine Living Network, True Movies, Fox, My TV Movies, Sentanta and Movie Africa. One of the channels, Fox Entertainment, is broad based and arguably one of the best entertainment channels offering drama, comedy, crime, sci-fi and action series as well as movies.
Although My TV does not have a licence for English Premier Soccer league, it has access to screen Bundesliga, La Liga and UEFA matches.
The majority of Zimbabweans currently rely on free-to-air channels that gave them access to SABC, Btv and until recently e-tv.
But they are likely to lose the free-to air channels, later this month amid revelations that the South African television signal carrier, Sentech, will stop SABC 1, 2, and 3 from beaming beyond South Africa’s borders.
This is a result of a two-year court battle between e-Botswana, a sister channel to South Africa’s e-tv and Sentech. E-Botswana has been challenging, in a Johannesburg High Court, Sentech’s failure to secure the encryption on its vivid digital satellite platform, a development which, it argued, was depriving it of advertising revenue.
Online Reporter