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| Sports |
| TV Malawi to beam Nations Cup |
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by
Oris Chimenya, 23 January 2004
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13:15:34
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Television Malawi (TVM) will beam this year’s Africa Nations’ Cup matches which start on Saturday in Tunisia, a development that should delight many soccer fans who cannot afford pay per view TV.
TVM’s director general Benson Tembo said in an interview on Thursday they have made arrangements with a France-based TV station to beam all the 34 matches of the continent’s biggest soccer show live whenever possible.
“Yes, we are going to beam Africa Cup of Nations matches through Canal France International (CFI) and all arrangements have been finalised,” he said.
Tembo said the cheapest broadcasting rights offer TVM got was from LC Tv at about 150,000 Euros (about MK20.3 million).
“Apart from that, we were also supposed to meet production cost of US$3,000 (MK327,000) per game, which we could not afford,” he added.
He said TVM will be beaming the matches based on bilateral arrangement which TVM, as a public broadcaster has had with the French company since 1999.
However, Tembo said the CFI/TVM bilateral arrangement will benefit both channels because while CFI will be airing their advertisements while TVM will air local advertisements.
Tembo acknowledged that the matches may clash with the station’s popular programmes and other sponsored programmes but said they would work out the logistics.
“If a programme is sponsored by an organisation, we will have to negotiate with the sponsors to shift the programme to another time, or we will have to record the match and show it after the 9PM news,” said Tembo.
CFI has been beaming French-based plays on the local channel through the same arrangement.
There had been uncertainty over TV coverage of the tournament following the closure of TV Africa late last year. |
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