afrol News, 15 May - Living in the UK, TV viewers can now consume African movies on a 24-hour basis. Lola Onigbogi, director of the newly launched African Movie Channel, holds that there is a "endless" market for African productions in Britain, in particular among African immigrants. Most of the films available on-demand are "Nollywood" productions, from Nigeria's large movie industry.

African Movie Channel (AMC) has just been launched as a new digital TV channel with content on demand in the UK. The service is distributed by Homechoice, a British digital home network that delivers video on-demand and digital TV to millions of viewers in the London area.

AMC is the first and only TV channel of its kind outside Africa - in Europe and indeed the world - dedicated solely to top quality African movies. Most films are from Nollywood - the very popular Nigerian film industry, and the third largest film industry in the world behind Hollywood and India's Bollywood - but AMC will also air movies from other major African film production houses.

With hundreds of films available on-demand, the new African Movie Channel offers British viewers a mix of classic films such as Violated, Osofia in London and Madam Dearest, and new and recent releases starring favourite African actors like Richard Mofe-Damijo, Genevieve Nnaji, Olu Jacobs, Rita Dominic, Ramsey Nouah, Fred Amata and many more.

"To launch the African Movie Channel on Homechoice is a very important and exciting step for us," said Ms Onigbogi from AMC. "Demand for both classic and new release African movies is very high in the UK, where there is a large African population. The opportunities that come with offering African Movies on-demand are endless and we look forward to working alongside Homechoice to create a unique and memorable channel," she added.

Working with partners AMC has been delivered as a Subscription Video On-Demand (SVOD) sub-channel offering for unlimited viewing twenty fresh movies every month, for the price of Ł9.99, and three Pay-Per-Rental sub-channels (priced from Ł1.50 a movie for 72 hours viewing), in one channel.

With the absence of a channel dedicated to showing African movies in Europe, the large population of Africans and other consumers of African movies had relied on renting low quality VCDs from local African shops.

The new African Movie Channel has now challenged this situation by making available a Video On-Demand (VOD) offering of quality African programming tailored for on-demand to serve the under-represented African television audience, putting them in total control of what they watch and when they watch.

By afrol News staff / Balancing Act

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