media update's Adam Wakefield spoke to Urban Brew’s new CEO, Verona Duwarkah, about her recent move and the television production landscape in South Africa.

You’ve worked at the SABC as general manager of strategic projects, group executive of SABC television, and most recently consultant and business manager at Cote Ouest. What led to taking up the position of CEO at Urban Brew Studios?

This is a different environment for me and it provides me with an exciting new challenge to lead a team that is passionate, driven, and innovative. It also enables me to experience the content production business from a producer’s view versus a broadcaster’s view. 

How has television changed over the last 10 years from a production standpoint? How much has this change been driven by digital technology?

The changes in the environment have mainly been driven by digital technology, which enables content to be produced, distributed on multiple platforms, and stored more efficiently. The entire content value chain can be digitised and this enables producers to spend more time in the creative space being innovative, rather than in the administrative, operational space looking for tapes, etc.

How do you view the current media landscape and where does television fit in as this landscape shifts and changes?

The world of media is a highly competitive one – the battle between the digital platforms and radio, print, and television rages on. It always comes down to great content generation, no matter what the platform.

Traditional television viewing, where a family sits together at a specific time to watch specific shows, is decreasing more and more as the various other screens become more accessible to more people. With so many options now available, people have the choice of watching what they want, whenever they want to, on whatever device they want. Binge watching is becoming more and more popular, given the various offerings available to the viewer. 

However, the television currently still remains a popular way of consuming content given the challenges around the high cost of data.

What are the greatest challenges and opportunities facing the South African television production industry today?

Challenges:

  • Funding high-quality shows that can be distributed on the many platforms now available;
  • Intellectual property ownership by producers, as most broadcasters or funders retain all or most of the rights.

Opportunities:

  • More collaborations and partnerships between producers, platform owners, business owners, government bodies etc. with a shared rights model;
  • Using the technological advancements to create high quality shows at lower prices.

What are the particular nuances of producing quality television programming for the South African market?

The SA market is still quite small and certain skills are scarce. For example, we prefer to licence formats from international distributors instead of developing our own, so we need to be bolder with experimenting with new ideas that we can licence to global players. Each platform also has their preference around what they want and largely dictate to producers from an editorial perspective.

Where does television’s future lie when it comes to screen size? Will mobile screens take over what television is?

Only time will tell … it is always about the personal preference - the viewer will make their choice.

For more information, visit www.urbanbrew.co.za

Video on demand is one aspect of television production that has been influenced by digital technology. Read more in our article, Video on demand services are creating a new range of choices in Africa.