The ManicaPost
Liberty Dube Post Correspondent
ZIMBABWE Newspapers (1980) Ltd is now on the path of being a fully integrated media house in Zimbabwe with a footprint in publishing and digital, radio broadcasting, printing and packaging and television broadcasting after they paid the $172 500 statutory fees required to secure its content distribution licence issued by the Broadcasting Authority of Zimbabwe (BAZ).
The content distribution licence which comes at a time when the Zimpapers Group had already set up Zimpapers Television Network (ZTN) as a production house, will not only give Zimpapers Group a unique opportunity to offer high quality television programming but a wider reach for its story-telling prowess, opening up more portals for content-creation and distribution.
Zimpapers group chief executive Mr Pikirayi Deketeke said the awarding of the licence, which will see the group tapping into the growing viewers market, fulfils Zimpapers’ long held dream to be a fully fledged media house and brings to culmination nearly a decade of investments beyond the traditional print business.
“As a fast thinking business, we carried out surveys. We looked around at what regional competitors and global players in the same business were doing. Kenya, South Africa, the United Kingdom, the United States and Australia were some of the markets we looked at,” he said.
“It became obvious that media was no longer just about newspapers and print products even though they remain important. We realised that digital was becoming big. We also realised that broadcasting was also a profitable avenue for distribution of our content. We then thought long and hard about how we could tap into that. After all, as Zimpapers, our competitive edge has always been content creation. We operate as a content factory that creates content and disseminates it across various platforms.
“Broadcasting, therefore, became something we got interested in with our plan being to start with radio first and then television. Our plan was to ensure that as Zimpapers we were covered across the whole spectrum — text, voice and video. A lot of work has gone into content creation such that we promise our viewers and advertisers a new experience in television viewing,” he said.
