Wade has previously worked in African countries like Namibia, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Zambia and Angola in the electronic media space. She did nine months in the print platform. Wade also did broadcasting but then evolved to production, marketing and management.
When asked how the station came about, she said, ‘YTV was called eBotswana before and GBC before that. So eBotswana relinquished their shares to the YMH group and YTV was established. YTV is the biggest free-to-air commercial TV station in Botswana, broadcasting 24 hours of the day, without charging subscription. We focus on entertainment and Sport and deliver opinions and productions from Batswana.”
YTV has since inception secured the English Premier league 2020 – 2022 season and they are just about to launch the new season.
“We acquired the rights from an EPL agent. Currently we also have a relationship with Voice of America and Deutsche Welle and we have partnerships in RSA who supply us with content. Over 30 percent of our content is local and mainly produced in-house. We are elated to announce we have signed a co-operation agreement with El Jazeera in Qatar, to retransmit 2 hours of their content,” she said
The creative sector has been growing in leaps and bounds, and it is no doubt creatives are passion and just need support. Some she has attested to and has vowed to support creatives.
“I think we have excellent talent and producers in the country with some investment they will be able to showcase their creative work on our platform. We believe that Batswana is well versed and confident people and we will see great content coming from local people,” she said.
“I am doing in-house training in various fields, like news reading, production and directing as well as effective planning and execution. I would like to have 40% local content by March next year and being involved demonstrated how many stories there are to tell. I found a lot of talent in the company when I took over and am proud to say that we are developing everyone in the company in many fields, including sales and marketing.”
Being a woman and taking up a lead in such a space has been challenging to her, especially in COVID times. Moreover the nature of the job is too demanding. “There are a lot of male decision makers here but I was lucky enough that the shareholders believed in me. But with a team so supportive, hardworking and dedicated, it was made easier. They inspire me to be excited to get to work every day.” She said. Wade has dreams of taking the station forward, not only in driving local content to the fore but to also come up ground breaking moves to grow the station.
“We are always dreaming about another channel but we need to do this one well and ensure it is successful before we make the next move. We want to be the respected platform for news and current affairs and have already taken the bold step to start ‘The Spotlight’, focusing on issues of the day.” She said.
“We would like to have our free-to-air decodes (no subscriptions) in every household in the country and give the viewers the choice they crave. Everyone has a remote. They will use it when and if they want to. This is why we attempt to broadcast the best entertainment we can source, in a cost effective manner. YTV is busy with negotiations with other broadcasters and we will share more on that in the months to come. But our local content has the potential to go across border.”
