New Sh36M Studio Equipment a Major Boost For KBC

MultiChoice Africa Holdings has donated television studio equipment worth over Ksh36.8 million to the Kenya Broadcasting Corporation (KBC) to boost its television upgrade project. The donation further cements the two institutions’  27-year-old, public-private partnership that begun in 1995.

MultiChoice Kenya Limited was established in 1995 as a jòint venture between the Kenya Broadcasting Corporation (KBC) owning 40% stake locally and MultiChoice Africa Holdings (60% stake), a subsidiary of the MultiChoice Group, to provide Subscriber Management Services (SMS) under the DStv brand.

Speaking when she presented the MultiChoice Africa Holdings donation, MultiChoice Kenya Managing Director, Ms Nancy Matimu, lauded KBC for its support over the years.  “We appreciate that our business has grown hand-in-hand with the Kenyan economy by forging long-term partnerships with the Kenyan Government, the national broadcaster of which you are and entrepreneurs.”

Part of the equipment donated include video switchers, a high definition audio-visual recorder, routing matrix, playout servers and a Media Asset Management (MAM) Storage System among other TV studio items.

Newly-appointed KBC Acting Managing Director Samuel Maina thanked Multichoice Kenya for the donation and lauded the 27-year-strong partnership which he noted keeps getting stronger. “In our quest to improve our picture and sound quality, KBC has in the recent past upgraded the video and audio formats to achieve an overall HD signal from content management to transmission,” he said.

As part of the improvement process, KBC has been in partnership with Multichoice Kenya which has acquired modern broadcasting facilities to aid in the achievement of more efficient content and news management processes.

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According to him, the donation will greatly enhance various areas within KBC which include automation of processes workflows, while storage of content will be made easier through complete, networked, high-performance shared storage workflow servers. He said the equipment will also assist in archiving the content in digital formats as well as automating newsroom operations by offering advanced collaborative planning, social media workflows, A.I. functionalities and state-of-the-art integration with studio automation systems.

“There is also training and skills transfer where KBC staff will be trained so as to get most of the systems and solution applied,” Mr Maina said.

The newsroom management system is also expected to transform KBC’s newsroom by re-engineering the editorial processes and setting the pace for convergence. As the country’s leading funder of local content production – via MNET – MultiChoice Kenya further assured KBC of its commitment to continue building skills and capacity to become the backbone of content that matters to its customers which already makes DStv, GOtv and Showmax brands the most-loved video entertainment locally.

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