Accra, March 26, GNA - Two months into its operations as a free-to-air (FTA) entertainment television channel in Ghana, VIASAT 1 has gained 12.3 per cent shares of commercial viewing in Greater Accra Region and 6.2 per cent nationwide, a report from Research International (RI) on Thursday said.

In January 2009, barely a month after starting operations in December 2008, the station gained 3.2 per cent shares of the commercial viewing, comprising of viewers between the ages of 15 to 49 and doubled it to 6.2 in February.

Mr Rune Skogeng, Chief Executive Officer of VIASAT 1, owned by the Scandinavian Modern Times Group (MTG), told the Ghana News Agency that the success of VIASAT 1 in Ghana within a relatively short time was one of the best starts MTG had had for a FTA channel. "We operate free-to-air channels in 11 countries and our success in Ghana is the best start so far," he said.

The gains of VIASAT 1, according to excerpts of the RI report available to the GNA, compared favourably with some of the TV stations which had been operating in the country before VIASAT 1 entered the Ghanaian market.

Mr Skogeng said the success had engendered corporate confidence in the channel, attracting some corporate giants such as Nokia, MTN, Tigo, Blue Jeans Energy Drink, all of which have started placing ads on VIASAT 1 and several others which were yet to close deals with the station. He noted that in coming into Ghana, the VIASAT team realized a void in TV content that could be relaxing for the commercially active 74 per cent of Ghanaians between the ages of 15 to 34, adding that TV content in Ghana was generally news, sports and talk shows. "It makes financial sense to pay attention to content that target that large group of Ghanaians because they are the ones who will see adverts and actually act on the basis of the adverts," he said.

Mr. Skogeng said VIASAT 1 focused on mixing high level professionalism with hip, trendy and high quality acquired content from some of the best production houses in Hollywood and other parts of the world, which was lacking in Ghana until the advent of VIASAT 1. "We do all that to assure Ghanaians and the corporate community in particular that we are here to stay and to build a lasting relationship for mutual benefit," he said. VIASAT 1 boasts of a number of trump cards, including having an aggregate of 30 kilowatts of transmission power, the highest in the country so far, being the first to do full page newspaper placements of their weekly programme outlines and synopsis to movies and also starting programmes on time.

Mr Skogeng said unlike the other TV stations, where the play out system was operated by humans, the VIASAT 1 play out device was server based and therefore the programmes were fed into the system which used a satellite clock ensuring that programmes and commercials were shown at the exact times advertised in the media. "That way we can promise out clients 100 per cent compliance level-that with VIASAT 1 they can be sure to get the exact spots and the number of slots they paid for their commercials to be shown," he said.

Touching on local content on VIASAT 1, he said the station had set a high benchmark for itself in terms of the quality of TV production on the current channel and was therefore working on starting a separate channel for local content. He said besides, there was ongoing arrangement with some African content owners in Ghana, Nigeria and other parts of the sub-region to buy some quality local content. In the area of reality show, he said "we have identified some personalities who we are considering as hosts of some exciting shows such as a Ghanaian version of America's Top Model, among other things." 26 March 09