SINCE SITTING down with The Voice Newspaper over a year and a half ago Rep Dat TV has gone from strength to strength.

The owner of the channel, Shaka Henry, was full of praise for the support he has received from the Voice, with the south Londoner adamant it was important for him to align with like-minded organisations that had blazed a trail before him.

Since outlining their plans for growth, things have moved fairly quickly for Henry, who is now on the lookout for more shows and content creators as he prepares for the future.

Rep Dat TV is a free-to-air 24-hour TV channel representing black British culture through entertainment, news and current affairs.

Henry and his team are on a mission to make it the greatest channel of its ilk. It’s been 13 years since he started out on the journey and it’s so far, so good.

“We’ve got a lot of appreciation for the article in The Voice in 2021,” he said.

“It’s things like this which I give respect to. I went to my aunty’s house in Lewisham where I grew up and the smile she had just to see the piece, because she has seen the journey, she knows the ups and downs, left and rights, she’s seen everything. I had my mum give it to all of her friends.”

He added: “We give a lot of respect to The Voice because it is one of those platforms for black British people that has been going for 40 years, so we have to respect what comes before us, and that’s a lot of what we do at Rep Dat.

“We took the article and went on the rampage. We bought about 50 copies and we went to every industry event, letting people know what we were doing and at that point we were just launching the channel.

“We’d left Yanga TV and we were joining AVO platform which was just about to launch in Africa. Since that time we’ve grown with them. We were the only black British TV on the platform and they were on Roku, smartphones and all of the platforms.

“So as time has gone on we’ve just grown, we’ve gone to all of the events, City Splash, reggae festivals, you name it.

“AVO in that time has experenced two million downloads, they are the second biggest platform in Africa after Netflix.”

Henry says the rapid nature of the growth left him a little taken aback. It’s not everyday you surpass your own projections in such an emphatic manner. It only served to whet his appetite for more.

“We were all surprised by that. We knew there was a need but didn’t anticipate that,” he said.

“The company AVO, if you look at them, they’re like Sky over here. They are a massive company. They wanted to launch an on-demand platform, they did that. There are two hundred million people in Nigeria, everybody seems to forget that huge audience. AVO managed to get channels that captivated people and they grew.

“So as they grew, Rep Dat grew.

“More demands came, more advertising came in, more content came in. We started doing live events like the CAMA Awards, we’ve got viewers in Poland and all over the world tuning in and now we’re at the point where we have launched our own app.

“We’re still with AVO but we’re independant. You can get us everywhere you can get Netflix now, everywhere. Phones, tablets, websites, any smart TV in the world you can put Rep Dat TV and see us.”

Henry has never wavered from his vision of bringing Rep Dat to life. He admits he’s had to learn some harsh lessons along the way but his background in sales has helped him to cut through.

“It’s been 13 years since we launched Rep Dat TV and when we first launched it was a bunch of friends from Lewisham, we’d all grown up in a council flat and always wanted to do something different, just not the stereotypical thing,” Henry enthused.

“That’s where we got the name Rep Dat from because we wanted to rep something different from what everyone else was doing.

“The environment I’m from is about five per cent of people doing negativity and 85 per cent of people live in their world and about ten per cent stuck in the middle, that’s the actual reality of what we represent. So we said we needed a platform where we can talk to the Saxon’s, the Coxsone’s but then also talk to the Omar’s, the Angie Le Mar’s and show that we’re more than just Drill music.

“Our whole thing was about pushing the positive culture that we have within black Britain.”

He added: “Some of the struggles along the way have been with the fact that most of the Sky TV stations were African TV stations, their majority focus was not the black British audience.

“One of the things I’ve also seen along the way is that we’re a community that wants a Voice Newspaper, we want a black Brit-
ish Rep Dat TV station, we want a Choice FM, but we do not financially support these platforms.

“If it was Netflix doing a black show, everybody is going to run to that show. Channel 4 just launched YouTube 4.0, that’s literally a black platform on YouTube with all of the YouTubers now going to a YouTube channel hoping to get a TV deal to potentially get around £6,000 and get their name out there.

“But if we could do it ourselves, they’re getting £50,000 or £60,000 on our own platform because they are getting the advertising directly. These are the barriers that we face.”

Team Rep Dat are pleased with the work that’s already been done, but looking forward Henry has a clear view about what he wants to see happen next and it could be an opportunity for any one who is interested in TV.

“Sound System Culture is one of the biggest shows that got picked up by Amazon Prime and most of our shows have gone onto Sky platforms as well.

Tip Your Cap was a really big show and it means a lot because, rest in peace Noel McKoy who just passed away, but we got to make a show dedicated to his career, Omar’s career, Don-E’s career to let them know that they were appreciated.

“We’ve got The Reggae Show, the only one of its kind in Europe, and we’ve got lots of movies, so if people want to send us content hit us up.

“We’re offering revenue splits, so we are not saying to give us your content for free. “If your content makes money, you’re going to make money. a competitive amount of money.

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