Vuzu boss: ''We want to bring people the best shows as quickly as possible.''

Yet another high-buzz, super-youth show is starting tonight on Vuzu (DStv 123) (The Vampire Diaries which in October I was first to tell you about RIGHT HERE). Here's the kick: South African viewers will be a mere 12 episodes behind America.

Vuzu launched The Vampire Diaries at the youth TV channel's 2010 first quarter preview at Melrose Arch which is where I spoke to Yolisa Phahle, channel director, special interests at M-Net. Yolisa is in charge of Vuzu and I asked her more about Vuzu's broadcasting strategy, how Vuzu has been performing since it replaced GO last year, and V Entertainment - Vuzu's daily, local entertainment news show.

For the full interview and her very interesting answers, you can click on READ MORE below.

It's obvious that with Vampire Diaries, Gossip Girl and Smallville – the shows are on South African television so close to the American broadcasting dates. South African TV viewers are not yet so digitally advanced and broadband is expensive, so watching TV for them is still largely done on a TV set. Can you tell me a bit more about your strategy of now having TV shows on so quickly? Are you trying to build viewer loyalty so that when that becomes possible, potential viewers will not be exploring other avenues but keep watching Vuzu?
I definitely think that although broadband is still fairly expensive, people do get to see these things – where there's a will there's a way, you know. For our audience, we're really competing with the internet, with DVD's, with the PlayStation, with all the other forms of entertainment that is available in the market. For us it really is a unique selling point to be able to bring people the best shows, in a legal way, as quickly as possible. For young people it's all about being current and being up to date.

Does it make it more difficult in terms of the contract with distributors and the logistics of getting the broadcasting material here so much faster than usual?
The studios are actually very supportive in what we're trying to do because for them piracy is a massive issue. They would much rather be able to have some control over where people get to view their product. It's a combined strategy. We actually realized that people are not prepared to wait. So it makes sense for everybody to give them what they want when they want it.

Can you tell me a little bit more on how Vuzu has been performing since it replaced the GO channel last year.
There is no comparison. M-Net has invested very heavily in the content we bring to Vuzu. The thing that Vuzu really does have is a slate of programming that if you want to see those shows, you can only see them on Vuzu and that really is a huge investment in Vuzu. People watch the channel a lot more than what they watched previously when it was another channel. And people like the channel. They like the brand. And maybe it's because we did go in the construction of this channel in a very different way than what channels in the past had been put together.

Vuzu has even more buzz worthy shows than the main M-Net channel – maybe it's just that youth centered shows creates and maintains more buzz because of it's nature – but how do you go about deciding what shows you want and would be desirable for Vuzu? If you look at Smallville, Gossip Girl, Vampire Diaries, and now also The Simpsons?
We basically say ''we are a youth channel''. We are looking to provide entertainment broadly speaking for people between the ages of 18 and 24. We know that younger people will watch it, we're happy if older people watch Vuzu. So when a program becomes available, we allocate our programmes according to who was this program created for.

What has been the reaction to V Entertainment, the daily, locally produced half hour entertainment news show that has been created for Vuzu? You guys took a big gamble with that, it's expensive, it's local and it's daily – what has been the response?
It was a big gamble and a huge investment and it's really been in the last couple of months that we've started to begin to see that investment starting to be paid back. V Entertainment is like anything new – it's takes some time to build the brand and loyalty, but for us we felt it was and is so important to build our own celebrity culture.
We knows that what happens in Hollywood is and will always be of interest here. But we have so many amazing celebrities, so many amazing musicians and talented actors here. We want to be able to build those people's profiles and create our own celebrity culture because we can't spend our lives running after the celebrity culture happening in America or in Britain. This is South Africa and we've got beautiful people here, and people of influence within the entertainment sphere. V Entertainment is basically where you can find out what is going on with those guys.

And the feedback on the show internally as well as from viewers?
You probably may have noticed that we have changed the look and feel of V Entertainment and I think originally we were maybe slightly not on the mark when we launched it. This show needs to speak about city, about glamour.
We want people to know when they watch V Entertainment they will find out immediately everything that is going on and happening in our country and in our cities and in our clubs and at our parties. We are making changes, but we're on the way to have something that's hopefully relevant. It's about being relevant really, isn't it.