The Managing Director of Multichoice, John Ugbe has revealed that the production of this year’s Big Brother Naija ‘Lockdown’ cost the company a whooping N3.5 billion.

Ugbe made the revelation during the Multichoice Showcase 2020 held via Zoom.

Speaking on the on-going BBNaija, which started on July 19, 2020 and expected to come to climax on Sunday, September 27, 2020 Ugbe said: “Big Brother Naija has been widely regarded as one of Africa’s biggest entertainment exports, being the biggest showcase of Nigeria’s diversity outside of core Nollywood. No doubt, the fifth season has been adventurous, exciting and entertaining, and undoubtedly the biggest thing on African television in 2020.”

The figure we learnt includes construction costs of over N300 million, N2 billion spent on production equipment such as consoles, cameras, microphones, cables, lighting, audio, and so on. Hundreds of millions also went into the provision of utilities, information technology and safety systems, building modifications, COVID-19 adaptations to the house among others.

Ugbe, also reaffirmed the company commitment to creating top-notch entertainment content for its numerous audience across Africa. Most of these new changes coming to DStv and GOtv will kick-off after Big Brother Naija Lockdown edition ends.

Also, speaking during the Showcase, Chief Customer Officer, MultiChoice Nigeria, Martin Mabutho said there will be new channels coming to DStv and GOtv before the end of the year.

Martin talked about the new division of SuperSport into different channels specialised in different sports and different football leagues. That means that each sport like UFC, Tennis, Motorsport, gymnastics, etc will have dedicated SuperSport channels while there’ll be special channels for different football leagues. In all, there are going to be 19 sports channels on DStv, including two ESPN channels.

Dr Busola Tejumola, Executive Head of Content at MultiChoice Nigeria also talked about other new international non-sporting channels coming to DStv and GOtv by November. They will be introducing Wild Earth, a documentary channel; Kix, a channel strictly for lovers of action films; and ZooMoo, a new kids channel. They will also be introducing tvN, home for K-Pop and Korean dramas dubbed in English; Timeless Drama Channel, a Turkish telenovela station for soap-opera lovers; and TLNovelas, a Mexican Televista channel dubbed in English.

Mrs Wangi Mba-Uzoukwu, Channels Director of Africa Magic also talked about a new set of series and shows coming to Africa Magic as soon as Big Brother Naija is over. Fans can expect to see new seasons of ‘Date My Family’, ‘Confessions’, ‘Judging Matters’ and ‘Unmarried’. Africa Magic will also begin new shows like ‘Enakhe’, ‘Riona’, and ‘Shoot My Shot’.

To top it all off, MultiChoice is also rearranging their M-Net stations to streamline different genres of movies. Instead of five M-Net channels, there will now be four channels numbered MNet 1-4. Customers can get access to all four channels with DStv Premium.