Leading satellite television service provider, StarTimes Nigeria says it has invested $200 million since commencing full operations in Nigeria in 2010.
Tunde Aina, Chief Operating Officer of StarTimes Nigeria in an exclusive interview with our correspondents in Abuja said the media outfit has also provided direct employment to over 1000 Nigerians thus contributing to job creation and economic development.
Mr Tunde said StarTimes has also provided thousands of indirect jobs courtesy of its presence in 35 states of the federation including the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja. He listed these to include jobs for dealers of decoders, content creators, producers, dubbers, and editors among others.
“StarTimes has invested over 200 million dollars in investment in Nigeria in the last couple of years. The very fact that you have a running business in Nigeria, you are contributing to the economy,” he said.
“First of all, you need staff, so you employ people. We have over 1000 direct staff in our employment. Then we have several thousands of dealers. We have super dealers and other smaller dealers. All these people are earning their livelihood courtesy of this business.
“Secondly, the content itself. We are broadcasting content. We have several Nollywood channels. So that means that the more channels you have, the higher the demand for content and that is more jobs for producers. These are the areas where the business has affected the economy positively.
“One other area is the issue of dubbing. I mentioned earlier that we have a lot of local language channels and some of these contents are foreign content. So you have foreign content and you want people to enjoy it in their local languages. This means you have to add value to that content by translating and dubbing it. So we have thousands and thousands of hours of content in Chinese and India. So that is an extra job created. That industry did not exist until StarTimes came. All we know is we produce our movies and we sell them. But dubbing content into local languages is a new industry that was created by our policy of broadcasting Chinese content in local languages. So somebody has to translate, dub and put everything together.”
Mr Aina noted that StarTimes which currently has over 4 million subscriber base will experience an exponential rise in the coming weeks due to service affordability, accessibility, quality of content and the proposed switch over from analogue to digital broadcasting.
“Our subscription rate is the most affordable in the industry. On the terrestrial and Satellite platforms, we have a subscription of N900 per month. And with that, you can watch more than 30 channels. That is the cheapest you can get anywhere.
“Our most expensive subscription is about N4900. And of course, if you are a Nigerian, you will know that that is probably less than a quarter you can get elsewhere. Relatively we are affordable. Affordability and accessibility have been our selling points from day one.”
StarTimes Nigeria, a joint venture between the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA) and the Star of China offers digital terrestrial television and satellite television services to consumers and provides technologies to countries and broadcasters switching from analogue to digital television.
They offer premium satellite content in news, sports, movies, novelas, music, kiddies programs, cartoons among others. They also supply decoders and digital television sets nationwide.
