Kwesé iflix which recently landed the award for Best Innovation in Digital Entertainment at AfricaCom 2018 in a bid to grow original African Content unveiled a slate of original programming from Kenya, Tanzania and Nigeria. Now in a recent development Kwesé iflix has partnered media company, BusTop TV in coming up with a comedy series, Comic Tick, on the Kwesé iflix platform.
Comic Tick features Zimbabwe’s finest stand-up comedians.
The first season has 10 episodes and features stand-up comedians Doc Vikela, Mandla Da Comedian and C’skhanyiso Dat Guy among others. In each episode, viewers will get to know more about these comedians and watch them perform.
But now Kwese-iflix is chipping in by funding the production of the second season.
BusTop TV founder, Luckie Aaroni said;
Comic Tick is commissioned work by Kwese iflix. They asked if we could create content targeting youths for their platform as they believe that comedy is one of the most watched content by Zimbabweans online. We agreed and came up with the concept of Comic Tick.
The production of Comic Tick, Aaroni said was fully funded by Kwese iflix including the payment of all the comedians who appear on the series.
Aaroni said a second season of Comic Tick was scheduled for next year adding that if the market responds well, they would continue doing more work with Kwese iflix.
This partnership signifies Kwese-iflix’s first gesture of wanting to promote the development, production, and distribution of local content.
Since its inception, Kwese had always promised that it will start to produce local content but until the days following Econet Media stopped its satellite subscription service they there almost silent about the issue.
At one point they even launched Kwese Vice (Kwese in partnership with Vice Media) to produce local content for not only South Africa and Zimbabwe but the whole of Africa where they have a presence. But it never amounted to anything significant.
Local content is usually good because its cheaper and it resonates with the local market. The like’s of Bustop TV are already household names such that people will likely be interested to use Kwese-iflix to watch its shows.
I don’t deny that western or foreign content is at most, more compelling than our own local content but with adequate resources, Zimbabwe could have its own Zollywood just like the Nigerians have their booming Nollywood.
Its only with companies like Econet Media (Kwese-iflix’s parent company), that adequate resources can be made available for the local film industry to reach such heights.
In commisioning Comedy Tick, Kwese-iflix follows in the footsteps of streaming and Video-on-demand platforms like Netflix.
Netflix is not only commisioning content but it now has movie studios of its own. Econet Media’s recently launched Kwese Studios could spearhead such an initiative to achieve such feats for Kwese-iflix, where will see the company operation movie studios with all the filmmaking resources.
