The sensation was made possible by new networks pushing to reach across Africa, aided by the arrival of satellite technology. Africans have long had access to foreign TV (from CNN to “The Sopranos”) or local programs, but not to TV from their neighbors. In the early 1990s, the South African partnership of M-Net and MultiChoice began the first homegrown satellite broadcasts to reach all of English-speaking Africa. With its path eased by falling state barriers to private broadcasters, the partnership now operates in 50 African and adjacent island countries, and has spawned at least two rivals, TV Africa and a new network launched by the venerable South African Broadcasting Corporation. The increase of these networks has aroused hopes that satellite TV can foster a new sense of cultural unity on a warring continent, and a tremor of anxiety at the rising power of South Africans in the region.
Both reactions may be premature. The networks say their audience is growing 10 percent a year and has an increasing thirst for African stars and themes. M-Net and its rivals have been screening more and more African-made shows. But only 4 percent of Africa’s 900 million people own televisions, although many more have access to TV in private homes, and very few can pay for a satellite dish (which starts at $200) or a monthly subscription. So the networks also rely on ad revenue and broadcast free to an audience they say is greatly increased by those who watch a communal TV. ‘‘We believe that half-an-hour-a-day highlights of ‘Big Brother Africa,’ which we’re screening free-to-air in 10 countries, are reaching 20 million people," says Carl Fischer, head of the M-Net team that produces “Big Brother.”
The new broadcasts are self-consciously African. SABC launched Africa-2-Africa in 1998 as the first satellite network produced “for Africa, about Africa or by Africa.” Five-year-old TV Africa reaches as many as 100 million viewers in 20 countries with its “proudly African” prime-time slots featuring African movies and shows, and is learning a lot about cross-cultural tastes, says its Africa Channels director Simon Camerer. “We’ve found that Nigerians love Zambian soaps, for instance,” he says. The producers note that satellites are bringing Africa together in another way, by providing many of the connections through which an estimated 8 million Africans now regularly surf the Internet.
M-Net is the largest of the new networks, with 1.3 million pay-TV subscribers. It is involved in producing new all-African sports, music and business channels and films. It produces shows like “Egoli: Place of Gold,” a daily soap set in Johannesburg, and “Jerry Springer’s “Saturday Night,” in which the U.S. talk-show host interviews mostly African celebrities. (He flies to South Africa to tape.)
Then, of course, there’s “Big Brother Africa,” in which 12 ‘‘ordinary” people from 12 African countries live in a house, where their every move is followed on-camera. Each week viewers vote one contestant off the show. The survivor wins $100,000. More important, says Fischer, the shows explodes national stereotypes (the arrogant South African, the apathetic Kenyan) and reveals contestants to “be just like us… they are African, essentially.”
It’s important to the networks not to be seen as merely South African. After apartheid fell and sanctions were lifted, South Africans began investing heavily in the rest of Africa. They are displacing former colonial powers like Britain and France as the top foreign investors in industries from mining to media, raising talk of a new imperialism. Prof. Guy Berger, head of journalism at Rhodes University in Grahamstown, says South African tolerance for TV sex and violence don’t always “go down so well.” The South African soap “Yizo Yizo,” which uses shock to spread social messages, has outraged some African audiences with graphic images of sex. Just last week, Malawi’s government banned “Big Brother Africa” from state television, describing it as “immoral.” That was another first for the satellite revolution in Africa–but no one imagined it would be easy.
