Kana TV

ቃና ቲቪ Kana TV
Launched	April 2016
Owned by	Moby Media Group
Picture format	1080p (HDTV) & 576i (SDTV), 16:9)
Audience share	24% (As of March 2017, )
Slogan	ውስጤ ነው
Country	Ethiopia
Website	http://www.kanatelevision.com
Availability
Satellite
Nilesat 102 7°W	12226-H-27500-3/4

Kana TV (Amharic: ቃና ቲቪ) is a private commercial satellite television channel currently operating in Ethiopia. Kana TV is owned and incorporated within Moby Media Group. It was co-founded by three Ethiopian entrepreneurs in combination with Moby Media Group and was officially launched in April 2016.^[1] The channel targets wide variety of serial dramas around the world. Most often, it broadcasts Turkish television dramas which arouse public attention toward the channel. It is currently Ethiopia's most popular television channel.^[2]

Kana TV is broadcast throughout the region by satellite Nilesat. The channel operates solely in the Amharic language with part of the content being locally produced and the other half being dubbed foreign content.^[1] The source of its popularity is the multitude dubbed foreign TV dramas it broadcasts. Among the most famous are Turkish dramas such as 'Kuzey Güney' (North South) and 'Kara Para Aşk' (Black Money Love)^[3] It has offices located in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia with plans to expand its studios to make room for locally produced content.^[4]

Ethiopian TV market

Due to the relative infancy of the television market in Ethiopia at the time of its launch, Kana had to commission its own studies on television viewership in the country. These studies revealed that a majority of viewers were watching foreign language content with channels like MBC 1 and Al Jazeera being some of the most popular.^[1] The success of its dubbed content was largely built on this fact that there was a large appetite for foreign content in Ethiopia that was waiting to be satisfied.^[3]

In March 2017 Kana released the first independently conducted all encompassing TV market study after launching its channel. According to this study Kana TV had gained a 34% market share and 8 of the top 10 highest rated prime time shows were on Kana TV (as of March 2017).^[5]

Programming

Criticism of programming

The channel has drawn criticism from conservative commentators who argue that over-consumption of foreign soap operas dubbed in Amharic will corrupt Ethiopian culture.^[3] This led to different associations composed of concerned actors, directors, & writers to formally petitioned the government to shut down the channel prior to it being launched. While appeals to shut down the network were ignored, the Ethiopian Broadcasting Authority (EBA) did change its policies to mandate that most of the content of television channels in Ethiopia be locally produced content.^[7]

References