What? Africans have televisions??? Why they'll be making music videos next!

An interesting article on the arrival of MTV to Africa trips up, unfortunately, on the some glib misinformation about African modernity. An otherwise OK article at one point comments:

"In much of the continent, televisions are only slightly more common than ice rinks. Americans own one television set for every one person, according to United Nations surveys. Africans own one for every 16. Pay television, MTV's platform here, is the staple of barrooms here,not the one-or-two room block urban homes where millions of young Africans live."

This is a snide comment that perpetuates cliches. Firstly, I doubt the ice rink comparison is anywhere close. Even if Africans own 1/16th of the TV sets America owns, I am quite sure that that is many millions more TVs than ice rinks. I'd be surprised if there were more than one or two ice rinks in Africa.

Besides, Africa doesn't have winter, so winter sports are obviously lacking in Africa. Whereas Africans do have eyeballs (and television stations). The comparison is absurd and tinged with racial offensiveness a la The Gods Must Be Crazy and Cool Runnings, movies about silly black people who are dumbstruck by cold weather and soda pop.

And what, pray tell, is wrong with watching television socially in a bar (which American sports fans do all the time) or outdoors gathered in front of a small shop (as I've seen in Zanzibar)? Does TV not count if it is a social experience? Isn't the point to make money by selling advertisements? So the more viewers the better. The notion that MTV might have to, god forbid, adapt its approach to the cultural and economic realities of Africa if it wants to succeed, ought to be a no-brainer. Everywhere else in the world it gets called cultural difference. In Africa it gets called backwardness.

[Thanks KCH for sending this my way.]