Ahead of Mipcom 2021, Lois Adusei, Head of Programming at Media General Ltd, spoke to TTV+ about the content she’s looking for in the international market.

TTVMedia, through its TTV+ platform and backed by Eccho Rights, presents its Buyers: What Are They Looking For? initiative to find out more about international buyers’ programming needs.

The interviews were conducted through the base of over 5,000 buyers registered on TTV+, a 24/7 online marketplace where buyers can look through catalogs from thousands of companies, and in which distributors can contact them to close businesses.

This time, we present Lois Adusei, Head of Programming at Media General Ltd.

Could you please introduce yourself and your company?

I’m Lois and I work with a media company in Ghana called Media General. It’s a group of companies, we have two TV stations and four radio stations. I started there about five years ago with radio, I was doing one radio station, the English one when it launched and then after two years, there was a convergence of both radio and TV with our digital business, and I was asked to do programming for all four stations. I work with the station heads, more like a consultant for the radio stations for four years, until I was moved to do both TV and radio. I have been in this industry for 15 years and I started right after school doing television.

Which type of content are you looking for?

Currently I’m looking for dramas. Dramas work very well, not only in this market but basically I guess everywhere. Everybody likes storytelling. If the storyline is good and people can resonate, they like it. The more reason why telenovelas or drama series from the Philippines and Asia work very well in Ghana. You find that even for local language channels, we go for those programs and then we dub them into the local language so people are able to follow the storylines. They do really well here. In other African countries as well. It tells us people crave dramas and that kind of suspense that they’re coming back to on a daily basis, like reading a story.

Which types of genres are you looking for?

Romance, family dramas, countryside settings mixed with urban. We have two TV stations, one is a local language station and the other one is English language. The English station has been number one since its inception, 25 years next year. We have always been the one to introduce different dramas from different regions across the world. And we have seen how people receive different content from different parts of the world. People like to consume content from other countries, if it’s really polished. If it’s local, they go for the local language dramas, which has a lot of fun stuff. But if they want something intense, which they can follow on a daily basis, they will opt for a foreign title from Asia or another African country. Men will go for American action series, for instance. The thing with those series is they don’t last on our TV stations because people can access them through other platforms like Netflix, so on the local stations you tend to lose.

Is there any specific title that’s working particularly well in your market?

What is really working currently is a local production, a game show. Everybody is watching it on a Sunday evening. It’s always trending, even before it starts. It’s called Date Rush and it’s the biggest thing in Ghana right now.

What we have acquired that have worked are mostly drama series or telenovelas from the Philippines called Wildflower.