Channel ED, a new educational TV channel launches on DStv 10 December

Channel ED will join the DStv family of channels on Tuesday, 10 December, on channel 318. The channel will give all DStv customers access to an exciting knowledge portal offering a combination of global high-end documentaries and new locally-produced content that aims to inspire audiences to remain curious.

From physics to finance, from culture to chemistry, from the natural to the supernatural, Channel ED brings together the learned and the learning so DStv customers get access to the world’s leading minds in an interactive, vibrant arena of ideas, innovations and discovery. Channel ED will broadcast to 49 countries throughout Africa, including South Africa.

Executive producer of Channel ED, Danie Ferreira, says: “Channel ED is about helping people across the African continent to expand their world with more knowledge, whilst also expanding the world’s knowledge about Africa. It is only through sharing this knowledge that we will change perceptions of Africa for the better.”

The channel will broadcast six hours of new content every week day, consisting of three hours of bought content, including documentaries and short form material, and three ED hours. ED hours are presenter-driven hours aimed at specific audiences: one block aimed at viewers between 25-49, one aimed at viewers 18-25 years old, and one at 15-18 year olds.

Examples of documentaries viewers can look forward to include:
•    Black Wings: They came from different backgrounds, different hometowns, and different eras. But they all had a similar dream – to fly. And they all had the same obstacle – being black in 20th century America. From early barnstormers to war heroes to commercial pilots, African Americans have an enduring legacy in the sky.

•    9/11 fragments: How do you grasp an event as enormous as September 11?  At the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, you start small: a briefcase, a Blackberry, a victim’s sweatshirt, a hero’s nametag. We encounter the extraordinary power of objects, simple things that tell personal stories, recounted in the donors’ own words.