StarTimes appoints Sophia Zhang new CEO of it’s StarSat South African operation

Pay-TV operator StarTimes has appointed Sophia Zhang as the new CEO of South Africa’s pay-TV operator On Digital Media (ODM) which runs the StarSat (formerly TopTV) service.

StarTimes, operational in several African countries, came to the aid of the struggling ODM in 2013 as its new financial backer after the Woodmead based company filed for business rescue last year.

One of the  requirements of StarTimes – if its bid for a capital injection was approved, whereby it would acquire a stake in ODM – had been that it would replace ODM’s CEO with its own CEO from within StarTimes’ executive ranks.

Sophia Zhang now becomes ODM’s third CEO.

She takes over from interim CEO Eddie Mbalo, who took over from the founding CEO Vino Govender.

ODM says that “StarTimes has named Sophia Zhang as ODM’s new CEO, although interim CEO Eddie Mbalo will continue to serve alongside Sophia Zhang until the business rescue process has been concluded, or until there has been significant progress towards its implementation”.

Sophia Zhang has experience of the TV market and pay-TV in Africa – she will head up ODM after she looked after StarTimes in Africa as the CEO of the NTA-Star TV Network in Nigeria.

StarSat, which launched as TopTV in May 2010, currently has just over 100 000 subscribers.