The Vice-President of Eutelsat, one of the world’s leading satellite operators, Mr Christoph Limmer, has described the cooperation between Graphic Communications Group Ltd (GCGL) and Crystal TV as a great collaboration.
He said the collaboration was an opportunity for the GCGL to grow its business, reach people and deliver messages in a way that other people did not have.
Mr Limmer made the observation in an interview after a familiarisation tour of the head offices of the GCGL in Accra.
He led a team from Eutelsat and was accompanied by the management of the Crystal TV.
He was briefed by the Managing Director of the GCGL, Mr Ken Ashigbey, and the Editor of the Daily Graphic, Mr Ransford Tetteh.
Collaboration
The two media organisations’ collaboration involves Crystal TV making available a full 24-hour news channel to the GCGL to air its content.
Crystal TV is partnering Eutelsat’s powerful satellites to broadcast its content to Ghana, Africa and globally.
Mr Limmer is in the country to witness the launch of a new product on the Crystal TV dubbed Mega Choice, a platform which allows multiple channels to run on the system.
He said Eutelsat was a cyber-super highway that could be used to deliver content to wherever globally, stating that using Eutelsat, Crystal TV could leverage on that to reach consumers of the GCGL products globally.
Mr Limmer said the cooperation between the GCGL and Crystal TV was to ensure that the Africa and global ambitions were met, “and we do that with our satellite technology.”
Content consumption
He said there was a continuous changing trend of media content consumption as many were moving away entirely from the television news to consuming news content via tablets and smart mobile phones.
Mr Limmer said through the collaboration, Crystal TV would make sure that the news content was not only delivered on television, but also via the satellite technology on tablets and smart phones, stressing that Eutelsat was committed to delivering media content through different devices to every part of the world.
Best global vehicle
For his part, Mr Ashigbey expressed his excitement about the relationship with Crystal TV and explained that Graphic was looking for a partner with the best global vehicle to deliver its content.
“I am excited because if you want to partner someone and you want to go global, you want to look for the best global vehicle to get there. And if you look at Eutelsat, in the satellite world it is a household name and biggest player to deal with.”
“So if you feel like being able to tell the African story and being a big brand, you will also want to find out which partners you will want to do that with,” Mr Ashigbey explained.
He said the GCGL found in the Crystal TV and Mega Choice a partner that shared the same focus of looking beyond today into the future.
“They are looking beyond the obvious,” he said, explaining that with the satellite, they would be delivering news content directly to readers in their homes.
Mr Ashigbey added: “We will not be looking at your regular TV as television again; it is a source of delivering content in a more intimate way.”
He said it would not only be via television but other equipment such as smart phones and tablets and that currently, the GCGL had gone digital, where with an APP on a smart phone, a reader could download the entire newspaper to read.
Mr Ashigbey said he was happy that the collaboration would offer staff of the GCGL an opportunity to access not just Ghanaian brands, but a global brand, and invited businesses to take advantage of the platform to grow their businesses.
Crystal TV goes digital
The Director of Operation of Crystal TV and Mega Choice Digital, Mr Prince Hari Crystal, explained that Crystal TV had migrated onto the digital platform.
He said the station was moving into news content and explained that “we saw in Graphic Communication Group the might and trend in delivering content over the years and we think coming together and bringing our infrastructure technical backbone to bear on content delivery on the side of Graphic would strengthen our position on the market and also a force to reckon with.”
Mr Crystal explained that the channel that would be dedicated to the GCGL would be a free-to-view channel and a premium channel as the company intended it to be.
Join GhanaStar.com to receive daily email alerts of breaking news in Ghana. GhanaStar.com is your source for all Ghana News. Get the latest Ghana news, breaking news, sports, politics, entertainment and more about Ghana, Africa and beyond.
