On Zambian Television

The Zambian media, and most particularly its television industry, is a peculiar affair. There are two major stations: the publicly owned Zambian National Broadcasting Corporation (ZNBC) and the private MUVI-TV (I have no idea if this acronym stands for anything). For those without access to South African satellite dishes, such as myself and the people of the compounds, these two stations are the sum total of television in Zambia. Yet, Zambians love their TV. Indeed, in all my visits to Zambian households, the TV is rarely off. One of my fellow teachers said to me that every evening after supper he watches TV till he goes to bed.

So what are the entertaining programs that keep the nation so glued to their TV set? Mostly, it is foreign soap operas. ZNBC offers fare from South Africa, Venezuela, and Nigeria. My favourite, well the only program I have watched on a regular basis, is a South African soap full of shady characters, intrigue, and race issues. I am told that a standard evening on MUVI-TV (who asks it’s viewers in all seriousness to “Stay Tunned”), which by an unscientific poll of my students I have concluded is overwhelmingly more popular than ZNBC, includes a South African, Mexican, and two Filipino soaps. Television brings the world to Zambia, one romantic drama after another. Probably this is a good thing. Zambian-made programs are incredibly low-budget, low-quality productions. Zambian TV would be no where without globalization.

The television news has also been an interesting experience. For one, North American media has different standards when it comes to what it is appropriate to display on TV. For example, when a man committed suicide by jumping off the ZNBC transmission tower the whole event was replayed on the evening news, including shots of him jumping off the tower and crumpled on the ground with blood oozing from his head. Or, when the story was about a woman succumbing to injuries sustained from a fire, the accompanying image was of the horribly burnt woman squirming in agony in a hospital bed.

My favourite, however, are the local weather forecasts. First, one should know that the weather each day is pretty much the same as the last. Right now, this can be summed up as hot and sunny with a little wind from the east. This has been the same now for several weeks. The job of a Zambian meteorologist, therefore, is not challenging to begin with. The forecast, however, traditionally reads like this: “The weather in Zambia will be hot to very hot today and sunny across the country.” Or, if one is lucky and gets a temperature forecast: “The temperatures tomorrow will range from 30 degrees to 38 degrees.” In this way, at least, the accuracy most be amazingly high. It is hard to be wrong with an 8 degree spread in a country where the temperature stays within a few degrees for months at a time!

So there you have it. A brief description of an overwhelmingly popular form of media here in Zambia, television. To sum up, I guess one could say that television here draws on programs from all over the world, but delivers them in a uniquely Zambian manner.