With every passing year, the world evolves — it becomes more interconnected, technologically driven, and nuanced. Each year we celebrate discoveries, test innovations, and push boundaries. Every generation improves on what the previous generation has built, and gradually what was once in vogue becomes archaic. This has kept us constantly on our toes at Paramount Africa.
As custodians of the sacred role of preserving culture while reimagining Africa, we have pushed the frontiers of our imaginations and the entertainment industry as we have strived to create the ambitious, progressive world we envision.
We have constantly dared ourselves to imagine. Imagine a world where African talents rub shoulders with their international counterparts. Imagine a world where the grand cadence of African sounds reverberates across every continent. Our imaginations have proved to be prescient as we have ushered in the very phenomena that seemed beyond reach in years past.
Now, as we stand on the cusps of a myriad of tectonic shifts, we need to imagine again — imagine content in our increasingly digitised and interconnected world.
The blurred line between socials and TV
As of 2001, social media sites functioned as glorified/elevated short messaging services (SMS) platforms, but not anymore. As of 2012, 88 percent of respondents in an exclusive poll created by PSB insights — a global insights consultancy — to identify how people discover and consume entertainment, identified social media sites as a form of entertainment.
But now, social media has become more of “media” and less of “social”. Consumers now watch everything from concerts to comedy on social media networking sites, while becoming creators themselves. This presents a world of immense opportunity for the entertainment industry as it presents a mother lode of untapped, original content.
As per a 2023 Media and Entertainment Outlook curated by Deloitte, content has become increasingly expensive to procure and produce for many media players, particularly subscription video-on-demand service providers. User-generated content produces a clear way out of this predicament. With models like what Paramount Africa adopted for the unscripted reality-TV series — Inside Life with Erica and A Life in the Day — the creator economy can redefine content to fit the taste of today’s digital consumer.
Presently, social networking sites provide options for creators to collaborate on posts and live streams. This useful feature can easily be leveraged to deliver premium user-generated-styled content to consumers. It is now possible for media powerhouses to collaborate with talents and creators for unscripted reality-TV-styled content, as many user-generated contents are bite-sized versions of the content delivered on reality TV series.
This approach will serve to unearth ingenious talents and launch them onto the global scene — a mission that speaks to the overriding passion that has fuelled us at Paramount Africa. We have sought to do this with platforms like the MTV Base VJ search, which has catapulted several video jockeys like Folu Storms and Ehiz to international relevance.
With the current media-heavy slant of social media networking sites and the inclination of Gen Zs for virtual realities, it is now possible to launch projects of similar nature as the VJ search without contestants converging at a physical location.
Virtual realities and the metaverse
A few decades ago, you had to be physically present to attend an entertainment event. With an increasingly immersive tilt, many platforms now offer consumers the opportunity to enjoy larger-than-life entertainment events from the comfort of their homes via the virtual landscape. As of 2022, scores of music top shots — including Justin Bieber, Ariana Grande, and Travis Scott — had made their debut in the budding metaverse, with more artistes set to follow. Acknowledging this new reality, in 2022, the MTV Video Music Awards included a new award category: Best Metaverse Performance. Too early? I don’t think so.
Statistics show that consumers are inclined to attend such concerts. According to research carried about by Morning Consult — a fast-growing business intelligence company based in North America — 61 percent of millennials and 56 percent of Gen Zs are interested in virtual concerts. These figures are backed by the sheer number of attendees we recorded at the Africa Day Concert held in 2021.
The virtual world and the metaverse are definitely here to stay. But, beyond acknowledging their pervasive nature, we need to begin to leverage them more extensively within the creative space. The metaverse can easily be leveraged to host live shows, cinematic experiences, and virtual watch parties. With more creatives taking an interest and exploring the possibilities of this new world, there are no limits to the innovations that would be created.
The global landscape of the creative economy has continued to evolve with a vivacious spirit, and we at Paramount Africa have relentlessly sought to redefine the growing space that has characterised the creative economy, through the constantly evolving content we provide to our audience.
As a major player in the entertainment landscape of the African continent, it is vital that we move with the climes that have significantly altered our ways of life, and at Paramount Africa, we believe that change is the driving force of progress.
