Pitt launches new free to air Television in Samoa

One month to the day after setting up Fetu FM radio station George Pitt has launched a new television free to air service called Star TV in Samoa on Monday 9th March.
In May 2008 Pitt became a major shareholder in the privatisation of the Samoa’s state owned broadcasting service. In September he set up Mareva Media with long time media friend Lance Polu to expand into other media opportunities.
“We have set up Star Network which means Samoa Television And Radio.” said Pitt “ We had to build the whole set up from scratch which has been a huge but gratifying challenge”
“Establishing a transmission infrastructure in a so much bigger place like Samoa is an achievement in it’s self” In a building leased for the next ten years the radio and television studios and administration has been seyt up along with Pitt’s apartment. “Nothing new, I’m living on the job, at the moment, it’s 24/7/365.”
Nearly all the staff are young but enthusiastic learning the industry, I’m having to relearn everything, there’s no Jeannie here. “he said.
“The local print media have been very supportive in their newspaper articles”
Despite there already being two commercial free to air television stations in Samoa Pitt said the 185,000 population offers a very competitive environment, no one is complaining there’s a third channel.
“The commercial base here will sustain our service.”
Star Network is offering viewing content the others don’t have. They tend to copy or duplicate each other in some of their programming. We are more than an alternative especially for the advertisers. We are the only 24 hour commercial TV station in Samoa.
At the moment we have 80% coverage of the country but will expand that to 90% when I can get our transmission engineer from New Zealand back.
“There are a lot of other commercial opportunities in Samoa’s robust economy,” concluded Pitt, ”TV and radio will be the means to the end to exploit those opportunities.”

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