by Thinus Ferreira
For the first time ever South African viewers are getting access to a highbrow arts TV channel like Britain's Sky Arts and America's Ovation TV or Classic Arts Showcase channels, with MultiChoice taking a really big step forward with the pop-up Woordfees TV channel running from today for a week on DStv channel 150.
The Woordfees TV channel in one word is astounding.
The Woordfees TV channel on DStv is true treasure-trove television; a colloquium of fine art cuisine content to savour, to perhaps record and rewatch forever, to ponder, and South African arts on television - shown and discussed - to simply just enjoy and immerse yourself in.
Even more astounding is that the fine arts, performing arts and visual arts celebrated on television on Woordfees TV - made for a diverse audience although it's connected to the annual Stellenbosch arts festival celebrating Afrikaans - is all local content.
It took Covid and a coronavirus pandemic to "force" this incredible innovation and concept as a partnership between the Stellenbosch Woordfees and MultiChoice.
Hopefully this astounding TV channel concept could hopefully, possibly, be broadened and expanded to run as a yearlong arts channel popping up every time there is a significant South African arts festival - from Aardklop and the National Arts Festival in Makhanda to others?
A channel like this would offer DStv subscribers en masse additional and complementary arts content on television that not only would yield viewers for MultiChoice but could likely draw in new subscribers who would pay for a highbrow, meticulously curated, arts channel, stimulating the visual senses but tantalising the mind.
A channel like this running more often, would also drives viewers to the physical arts festivals as a on-air TV promo for their deeper content and programme offerings and expose the DStv subscribers sitting at home to art and art forms they wouldn't ordinarily engage with.
Woordfees TV is like getting a DStv all-access pass, for one week, to an arts institution for higher learning.
Not only is Woordfees TV entertaining, mentally soothing and incredibly informative to watch, it makes you feel smarter while the content is incredibly accessible.
It feels surreal and unreal being able to watch South Africans on television on Woordfees TV doing nothing more (and nothing less than) talking about books, talking about arts; delving into philosophical discussion in one programme and then talking food in the next - while the channel is packed with special pre-recorded, must-see musical performances and stage plays.
Featuring theatre performances and plays, writers, books and book discussions, dance, lifestyle programmes, stand-up comedy, contemporary and classical music, film, discourse, and visual arts spanning theatre and film, if you love arts you'll fall in love with Woordfees TV as a viewer.
