Whom we love, we chastise. The bible says something like that. So let it be known that TMB (that’s The Media Blog) is a fan of EbonyLife TV. Stop thinking about the misadventure with Desperate Housewives. Let’s not hate on The Spot today (just today, we promise). There’s more than that to them. What they are doing with homegrown, original content – everywhere from food to features – is truly impressive. Good money spent. Acceptable-to-excellent quality delivered.

Chefrican has great vibes. The Crunch is excellent TV (and solid rebranding there from the staidly named EL Reports). Men’s Corner is delicious. The Governor makes a good case for itself. The guys at PartyJollof can’t stop hating on ‘On The Real’ and it’s easy to see why, but it’s good looking. Then there’s all the handsome TV dramas. Someone’s clearly making the effort.

But NONE OF THAT GREAT CONTENT HAS BEEN DISTRIBUTED DIGITALLY!

It makes you want to scratch your head till you have a sore. We hear at TMB that it’s all kinds of awkward agreements they signed with Multichoice. But no, no, no. That makes no sense for a platform whose viewers are waiting for them on Instagram and Twitter – and BellaNaija, and YNaija.

Yesterday, some light flickered. A possibly viral video from Igwe Tupac on EL NOW found its way online, and it caught my attention. As it must have the attention of the many scrounging for some premium local content to watch.

That was a good clip. So we want to assume we will be seeing more of things like this. To assume that EL TV has finally figured it needs to drive clips and pieces online in a market where no one has figured out paywalls and viewers are used to good content given freely.

Just like PopCentral.tv, which I just discovered this morning. Interesting, scalable, if immediately expensive model. Let’s think through it, and we’ll talk about that together tomorrow.

PS: See anything worth talking about on the ins and outs of the media business in Nigeria on TV, radio, print and online (could be news, tweets, photos, opeds etc) send us a mail on [email protected] titled TMB. Let’s share the insight together!  

Isime Esene