Nollywood Movies, the first Nigerian 24-hour movie channel to launch on the Sky digital platform, has chosen Advanced Broadcast Services as its playout service provider.
Transmitting across the UK and Ireland, the new 24/7 channel offers subscribers over 30 different different movies per month from Nigerian production companies, which together constitute the third largest film industry in the world.
“ABS was recommended to us as an independent and highly efficient company with many years of experience in the play-to-air business,” comments Alfred Soroh, one of Nollywood Movies’ directors. “Our tapes are ingested into the digital file-based system at ABS and transmitted in accordance with an emailed schedule which rotates to provide a round-the-clock service. ABS also provides support services including quality control, an in-house studio and promo editing. The ABS management and staff have proved extremely competent and flexible in meeting our specific requirements.”
Most Nollywood Movies content is being broadcast in English with a proportion of programmes in other Nigerian languages with English subtitles. The channel shows a variety of genres from comedy and drama to tradition, romance and more.
“Nigeria’s Nollywood movie industry is the third largest in the world after Hollywood and Bollywood,” adds ABS managing director, Sass Jahani. “Our aim is to help Nollywood Movies achieve its declared ambition of becoming one of the best-known movie channels in the business. Transmitted on Sky channel 331, Nollywood Movies is supported by a combination of subscriptions and advertisements. As with other clients, we receive an electronic playlist showing the order in which programmes and interstitials are to be played out. The playlist goes straight into our system which automatically check that all specified content is on the server. Any missing content is then notified to the sender.”
