Transcript
BOG GARFIELD: From war to famine, to AIDS, the worst of Africa manages to find its way onto the American media landscape. And so does the soft-focus fodder of The Lion King and other idealized entertainment. But seldom do the dozens of countries on the continent have the power to define their own portrayals. According to James Makawa, a longtime NBS News correspondent, originally from Zimbabwe, that will soon change with the launch of the Africa Channel. (MUSIC UP AND UNDER)
ANNOUNCER {SOUNDTRACK): A pipeline into one of the largest untapped sources of programming anywhere on the globe. (AFRICAN MUSIC)
BOG GARFIELD: Unlike Pan-African channels for Africans that have failed in the past, Makawa says the Africa Channel for Americans is designed specifically to combat mischaracterizations of an entire continent. I asked him how a continent with 53 countries, hundreds of languages, and vastly different cultures can be captured in a single channel.
JAMES MAKAWA: Africa is not one monolithic, you know, place. As you point out, there are many languages, many cultures, from Cape to Cairo. This is an effort to showcase a side to Africa that Americans never, ever see. The idea of just constantly having a picture on television showcasing children with flies in their eyes is just not going to cut it anymore. So will people respond to something positive out there? Absolutely. We have no doubt about that. We have travel shows that we believe are very exciting. We've also got a show called Carte Blanche which is our version of a 60 Minutes. We will also have music shows, movies, lifestyle. We are a general entertainment network, just like a CBS would be structured.
BOG GARFIELD: I want to ask you about logistics. TV production is very expensive. How do you get capitalized in order to do the kind of programming that will be able to compete with, you know, the enormous variety of programming already available on American cable?
JAMES MAKAWA: Well, the thing is at the end of the day you don't necessarily need two million dollars to tell a story. You know, that's what the Americans do. You can still tell a compelling story without having to spend two million dollars to do it. A lot of producers and a lot of writers are putting some incredible stuff together over here that they've already sunk their local money into. And it's world class stuff. But it has just never had a home. We are going to be able to aggregate all of this incredible content and seam it into a channel where the viewer is going to come to us for an African experience.
BOG GARFIELD: I can see how some of it would be fascinating. Has it been fascinating to advertisers, at least hypothetically?
JAMES MAKAWA: For the first time in television history, African advertisers will be able to afford to reach the most coveted market in the world. Until now they have not been able to advertise on the main networks in the United States. It's just too expensive. But through us, travel companies, banks, anybody in the hospitality business, stock exchanges--I mean, I can go on and on and on. That is our advertising base, and these are some of the people that have already signed up with us and are coming to the table. But we will also be engaging American companies that do business in Africa. And there are loads of those kind of companies that are interested in coming on board with us.
BOG GARFIELD: All right now James, I want to talk to you about reality. You watch the History Channel, and you tend to see the history of crimes [LAUGHS] and violence and other lurid things. You turn on the Discovery Channel and you also tend to see things about true crime. And you go to the Health Channel and you see surgeries in progress and blood and gore and guts. Will there by pressure on you in doing the Africa Channel, to show content that is sensational in some way that will make you as a programmer feel queasy trying to attract an audience?
JAMES MAKAWA: Oh, you know what, those people that do that kind of programming, they do that well; they build their audiences that way. We're--you know, Africa is a compelling place, with so many unique stories to tell. And those stories have just never been told. We don't have to go in that direction. And we won't go in that direction. We don't have to conform to the lowest common denominator here. We're just coming from a totally different space, with a totally different vision.
BOG GARFIELD: Have you licensed any soaps to run on the Africa Channel in the United States?
JAMES MAKAWA: Yes, we have. We've got two very good soaps that we've licensed from South Africa. You know, these are soaps that will showcase Africans in a way that the west has never seen. You know, Africans are never portrayed [LAUGHS] as people who know how to love. They are never showcased as people who are in love interests, or have ambitions to be successful, or are showcased as people who have wealth, and so on. And so what we're getting at is that the soap opera is not there just to entertain, but it's also there to educate, but also give people a sense of what is going on, on this part of the continent, on a daily basis.
BOG GARFIELD: All right. Well James, all the best of luck.
JAMES MAKAWA: Thank you very much for having me on your show.
BOG GARFIELD: Former-NBC correspondent James Makawa is the president and CEO and co-founder of the Africa Channel. (MUSIC)
BROOKE GLADSTONE: And now an update. Two weeks ago we spoke with Doug Clifton, the editor of the Cleveland-Plain Dealer, about how his paper was feeling the chilling effect of Judith Miller's jailing. In a column, Clifton had revealed that the Plain Dealer was sitting on two stories based on leaked documents, for fear that running the articles would spark an investigation that could land their reporters in jail for protecting their sources. On July 20th, a weekly alternative Cleveland paper called Scene broke one of those stories. Their report, based on a leaked FBI affidavit, revealed that the FBI was investigating former-Cleveland Mayor Mike White for extortion. A second piece affirms that this was one of the two stories that the Plain Dealer had chosen not to publish. Since the Plain Dealer's reporters were now identified with the leak, the paper decided to published its own article about the corruption investigation. The next day a federal judge ordered an investigation into who had leaked the documents to the two newspapers. (MUSIC UP AND UNDER)