Zuku TV Acquires Rights for Popular Ugandan TV Series

Zuku TV has today announced that it was ramping up its roll out in Uganda with the acquisition of broadcast rights for a hugely popular Ugandan TV Drama series, Hostel. Richard Bell, Chief Executive Officer of Wananchi Group (Zuku TV holding company ) confirmed that the Zuku TV has secured broadcast rights for airing the national football match between Uganda Cranes and the Iraqi national team.

Both teams are set to play a friendly match in preparations for their FIFA World Cup qualifiers. The match will be exclusively aired under the Zuku Sports menu on Friday August 26^th at 9.30 pm East African time. The match is historical to the Iran because it will be their first home fixture in nearly ten years.

The match is scheduled to be staged in the northern city of Arbil at the 28,000 capacity Franso Hariri Stadium.

“This is the first of a series of exciting live viewing and event coverage that we are going to be showing on our platform as we seek to be the preferred home entertainment provider,” he said noting that it demonstrated the Zuku TV commitment towards delivering valuable content.

Bell noted that Zuku TV had now reached a holistic national rollout phase in Uganda after a highly successful pilot and soft launch phases.

He noted that Zuku TV would also air UBC, NTV Uganda and Bukudde TV initially as the free to air channels that will be available as Ugandan content but pointed out that the potential for growth of a locally produced content industry remained large.

“Uganda’s pay TV market penetration is still under 1% which presents a huge growth sector for Zuku TV. We believe that Pay TV today is what mobile phone telephony was nearly a decade ago and as we witness a growing middle class, there is definitely hunger for valuable, affordable home entertainment,” he said adding that the population of households with television sets was expected to hit the 9.6 million mark in 2015.

In addition to pricing the Zuku TV offering in local currency the Zuku TV decoders are designed to be used in places without electricity.

“Zuku TV decoders are designed to use DC electrical supply from a used car battery,” Bell added.