It's weird how they officially acknowledged the name change this month when the rebrand occurred mid 2020 and I personally told MultiChoice about it and their websites updated it last year as well.
Here's the press release:
Bay TV, Channel 260 on DStv is changing to a new name and launching their new brand of Mpuma Kapa TV. The only television broadcasting channel in the Eastern Cape has been on our TV screens since 2011 and has over 1.8 million viewers. The channel was established in the Nelson Mandela Bay, as an independent community station.
The vision has always been to be recognised as a platform for the Eastern Cape to share and capture its stories, while grooming new talent from the province to the media industry. The channel is an entertainment all-rounder that presents viewers with countless entertainment, current affairs, news, sports and religious content.
The rebranding is an exciting new journey for the channel and aims to bring viewers bigger, better, more entertaining and extremely inclusive content.
Samkelo Dlulane, Mpuma Kapa TV board member, shares more.
Bay TV has been around since 2011. Can you share with us how it started?
There was a need to open up the Eastern Cape to the television broadcasting industry, there a were so many young people moving to Johannesburg to be part of the industry, however there were some who did not have that opportunity or had no means to chase the TV dream.
I think the start of Bay TV was to say, there is no need for our people in the Eastern Cape to leave the province, rather Bay TV was started to give them the opportunity to be on TV and to learn about the full value chain of television broadcasting and production industry. Today, when you look at many of the major production companies and broadcasters, they have a huge pool of Bay TV alumni - whether on screen or behind.
After all these years, the station has rebranded to Mpuma Kapa TV. Could you share the reasoning rebrand and name change?
Bay TV has always been seen as a Nelson Mandela Bay TV channel even though it was meant to represent the whole of the Eastern Cape. Our rebranding was due to the board of directors seeing the need to rectify this. Therefore, the channel renaming and rebranding to Mpuma Kapa TV was to ensure that the whole of the Eastern Cape could claim the channel as their own, further ensuring that advertisers also understand that the channel speaks to the whole province and not focused on the Nelson Mandela Bay.
The channel has grown and continues to grow, with its head office in Nelson Mandela Bay and with another office in East London, with plans to expand to OR Tambo region and Chris Hani region to ensure that the whole province is able to access the channel and further for the channel to cover news and stories in all the EC regions.
Mpuma Kapa means Eastern Cape and that is why we have used this name, to have a direct meaning to the province. As an independent community station, how is the station funded?
Mpuma Kapa TV makes most of its money from advertising. MultiChoice provides grants to community media on their platform. However, that is not enough to run an operation like Mpuma Kapa TV. We have a government who buys ad space and have started attracting private sector, through media buying agencies. As we have a big Eastern Cape market as we speak directly to them.
What can audiences expect? Will there be new shows? More entertainment?
We are excited to announce new content, new faces and also new ways of broadcasting. The channel has introduced a live-streaming services to its offerings. It is working on new documentaries and also new exciting shows. We have travel, entertainment, sports, current affairs and religious shows. Some of our old shows are getting a facelift and new names, as they were named for Bay TV, and now they will be representing our new brand.
As a community station, how can locals get involved?
Mpuma Kapa TV has given our local content producers and opportunity to use the channel as a platform for their productions, further 90% of all our content is from the EC and by the EC community. The channel sees its self as a training ground and is always open to take young people who would like to get training and experience in the industry.
Further we assist writers and people with concepts to develop them, and we assist in ensuring that we help bring the ideas to life. Mpuma Kapa TV will continue to ensure that it grooms industry ready individuals for the industry.
Hopefully a revamp or rebrand is underway for GauTV (News channel) and Tshwane TV (Prophets channel). In the end almost all community channels kind of lost the little value they had left so that section is abandoned or deserted at this point.
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