Agya Koo TV hasn’t benefited the movie industry, it was a complete waste of time – Ola Michael

Even though movie producer Ola Michael does not believe that the government spent any huge sum of money on the Agya Koo TV platform, the whole process and launch was a total waste of time and energy, as the platform has not benefited the industry in any way.

Two years after the Akufo-Addo's government, through the Ministry of Tourism, Culture, and Creative Arts, in collaboration with 2C digital media, launched the Agya Koo TV platform, questions have been asked as to whether the platform has served the purpose for which it was launched, that is to promote locally produced content.

"we are in the business of placing Ghanaian content at the disposal of viewers worldwide and the artistes are signed on to produce popular content, including already existing content, that will run as a series in the name of the artistes and it is already showing on most of the mobile phones”, Catherine Afeku, the then Tourism Minister stated at the launch.

But two years after the launch and with the seeming collapse of the movie industry, producer Ola Michael says the Agya Koo TV was just a political move by the NPP to reward Agya Koo for campaigning for them during the 2016 elections.

Ola Michael who spoke exclusively to Ghanaweb said it would have been more profitable to have a platform that showed local content in its entirety than the contents of one person, especially, when the individual neither owned the content nor had rights over the videos.

The astute producer said the government could have invested in a stand-alone app like Netflix, where movie producers would put their content and make some revenue for themselves and the industry at large.

“Government could have invested in a stand-alone app like a Ghana Movie app, where people pay and watch like the Netflix app, that would have been a more beneficial and profitable and a wise decision to have taken than doing it because Agya Koo is an NPP person and he campaigned for you.”

Ola Michael said going forward, the best thing for the government to do is to inject capital into the industry.

“I think the best thing for the government to do is, the industry now lacks capital injection and if there is anything to be done, it has to be capital investment, making some funds available for people to shoot and to produce content,” he stated.

Listen to his interview below: