By Brighton Muronzereyi and Anesu Mirisawu
FAST-GROWING independent commercial television station, 3Ktv, continues to shine.
This comes as the trail-blazing channel has garnered more recognition, this time from the National Blood Services Zimbabwe (NBSZ) for its news coverage of health and blood trends.
The 15-months old station’s Jester Media Services Group (JMS) stablemate, the inimitable Daily News, also won an award at the same glittering ceremony held in Harare on Friday night for its comprehensive reportage of health issues.
Enterprising JMS reporter, Nyasha Kunyiswa, also walked away with an award for her coverage of health and blood trends at the event.
JMS Group Editor-in-Chief, Guthrie Munyuki, said it was gratifying to see the group’s various brands and staff continuing to be honoured by key stakeholders like the NBSZ for their outstanding work.
“We appreciate the exceptional support that we continue to get from our audiences and business partners across all our market leading multi-media product offerings — from TV to print and digital.
“May these winning and mutually-beneficial relationships long continue.
“My gratitude also goes to all my hard-working and loyal colleagues across the JMS group for continuing to deliver riveting content for our audiences on all our platforms.
“This has resulted in us receiving all these accolades that we are getting, at a challenging time for many other players in our important industry,” Munyuki said.
The latest awards for 3Ktv underline the station’s growing dominance of the broadcasting sector, where it has won a string of other accolades and also registered many significant milestones over the past 15 months.
The channel, the country’s first independent television station, was recently adjudged the best broadcaster in Zimbabwe on travel and tourism by the Twalumba National Travel and Tourism Awards.
Those awards were organised by the Travel, Tourism & Environment ministry, in conjunction with the Zimbabwe Tourism Authority (ZTA) and the Tourism Business Council of Zimbabwe (TBCZ).
The gong was in recognition of the station’s tireless efforts in covering and promoting travel and tourism in the country.
3Ktv’s much-followed news and current affairs programme, Vantage, was also recently named the country’s outstanding television programme.
Vantage’s host, Munyuki, was also adjudged a ‘distinguished editor” for his outstanding leadership role at JMS.
Meanwhile, 3Ktv begins its Season 6 today, which will be headlined by a major focus on the crunch 2023 national elections due in August.
3Ktv’s Head of Programming, Lucia Kanyongo, promised continued balanced and heightened coverage of all political developments in the country.
“We promise an exciting season in which we will bring balanced, fair and accurate reportage on political events leading to August 23’s national polls.
“Our news and current affairs programmes will, crucially, incorporate more views of ordinary citizens in the run-up to and post the elections,” she said.
Among other new programming, 3Ktv will bring to viewers a drama series, Munhanga, which spotlights the hardships faced by women.
“3Ktv viewers will also enjoy our news bulletins in Tonga and Ndau, with the bulletins to be broadcast on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays at 10:30am.
“The popular drama series, Bundu, also returns to the silver screen with rangers continuing their fight to curb poaching every Wednesday evening.
“The world of mystery, sorcery and Christianity continues to be unravelled in the horror series Jangano.
“The station will also unveil five new cartoon series from the partnership with the Korea Republic,” Kanyongo said further.
“For sports fans, 3Ktv will broadcast Northern Region Division 1 soccer league matches on Saturdays at 3pm and on Sunday Premier netball league matches will continue to be broadcast in the afternoon,” she added.