Ethiopian Informer
ADDIS ABABA: October 3 (EI) – Ethiopia on Thursday announced the launching of the first-ever dedicated Ethiopian TV platform to host Ethiopia’s most popular local channels – Ethiosat.
The first-ever dedicated Ethiopian TV platform was launched by agreements between the Association of Ethiopian Broadcasters (AEB), the Ethiopian Broadcasting Corporation (EBC), and the world’s leading satellite operator, SES (SES.com), the AEB disclosed on Thursday in a press statement via APO.
Ethiosat is hosted on SES’s NSS-12 satellite at 57 degrees East and delivers over 30 channels for Ethiopian audiences only, with 12 of those channels already in High Definition (HD) quality.
“Up until now, the majority of Ethiopia’s content has been broadcast from an orbital location that also supplies content to Middle Eastern and North African countries, which explains the often confusing mix of content,” said Amman Fissehazion, Chairman of the AEB,.
“By migrating the most popular Ethiopian TV channels to a new location on SES’s satellite, we’ve created an Ethiopian-only TV offering, that also delivers a variety of channels in HD, a first in Ethiopia,” the chairman added.
Fissehazion also added that this is also a great time for the millions of homes in Ethiopia that currently do not receive TV services to bring TV sets into their home.
“For Ethiopians looking to buy a new TV set and receive content from the dedicated TV neighborhood, we recommend purchasing an HD TV whenever possible, as this will allow for a higher picture quality,” he added.
The launch of Ethiosat is also said to offer Ethiopians a larger offering of both local and relevant international content in the future.
“We believe consolidating all Ethiopian TV channels and broadcasting them from one orbital position will fuel growth in the Ethiopian media sector, as local networks will now be able to easily expand their audience reach. This will foster healthy and growing advertising markets, which will result in a greater variety of content, and more localized content,” Amman said.
To access Ethiosat direct-to-home (DTH), Ethiopian TV viewers must have their respective local satellite antenna installer change the position of their antenna. This will allow them to receive the content from SES’s NSS-12 satellite, it was noted.
