Posted: Friday 5th September 2014 at 8:30 am

Socrates Fights TV Stations

Renowned movie maker, Socrates Sarfo, has taken a swipe at television stations that broadcast Ghanaian home video movies for free without consulting the producers of the said movies.

According to Socrates, the practice is on the rise these days and is a major factor responsible for destroying the country’s movie industry.

“Television is the one thing killing the market today. People are watching our movies for free on TV, so Ghanaians do not see the need in buying the movies if they can watch them for free on TV,” the ‘Hot Fork’ producer told NEWS-ONE.

Socrates stated that in western countries, television stations pay producers before attempting to show any movie on their stations because it costs a lot to produce movies.

However checks by the paper revealed that most Ghanaian movie producers go into some form of barter with these TV stations that allows the stations to telecast their old movies for free on condition that the movie producers also get to advertise their new movies on the networks for free.

But Socrates explained; “any movie producer who does that shows that he is ignorant about the very industry he is even operating in.”

“There is nothing in the world like an old movie. When you make a movie, at least every 10 years you have a new generation who haven’t seen that particular movie before. You can bring back that movie into the market and sell them. Once someone hasn’t seen the story, it is still new,” he added.

He attributes what he terms an act of “ignorance”, which is affecting the movie market, to the fact that most of the new movie producers are not being educated by the veterans in the industry.

“Some of these producers do things that will affect the market by giving it to the TV stations to be shown for free. It is only in Ghana that these things happen. It is affecting the whole market. It is one of the reasons why our movies are not selling now. This also happens because we have not educated the new producers who are coming into the business,” he said.