Showmax gets new COO
MultiChoice has made a raft of changes to its leadership team, including appointing Joe Heshu as chief operations officer (COO) at its Showmax video streaming service.
The changes were announced in an internal company letter obtained by MyBroadband.
The broadcasting company explained they formed part of its effort to refine its internal processes and explore ways of enhancing its leadership and continuity capabilities.
Heshu took over from Barry Dubovksy on 1 October 2023 and is now reporting to interim Showmax CEO Marc Jury.
MultiChoice said Heshu has experience in diverse executive leadership roles, having worked in fast-moving consumer goods (Diageo, Pernod Ricard & BAT) and the technology platform business at Uber.
He holds a degree from the University of Pretoria in Political Science and International Relations.
At MultiChoice, he previously served as the group executive head of corporate affairs. In this capacity, he was responsible for transforming the Enterprise Development (ED) Trust into an innovation fund and led the Accelerator program.
“As the Regional Director for Southern Africa, Joe’s leadership was marked by a series of successes,” MultiChoice said.
“Under his leadership, GOtv saw growth after witnessing a 4-year decline, Zimbabwe posted the highest subscriber base in six years, and four exclusive free-to-air channels were launched.”
Outgoing Showmax COO Barry Dubovsky will be leaving MultiChoice after five and a half years. He is staying on in an advisory role until 29 February 2024.
New regional director and General Entertainment position
Heshu has handed over the reins of regional director for Southern Africa to Kemi Omotosho, who will be reporting to MultiChoice Africa CEO Fhulu Badugela.
Omotosho started at MultiChoice Nigeria in 2014 as the head of customer value management (CVM).
In 2018, she was promoted to head of customer life cycle management and has served as group executive head of CVM for the Rest of Africa business for the past three years.
MultiChoice said her notable achievements included leading the FIFA 2023 World Cup CVM plans to make MultiChoice Africa Holdings profitable, pioneering the Africa-wide Step-Up campaign with $12 million incremental revenue, and a 25% year-on-year campaign revenue.
Lastly, MultiChoice appointed Portia Heshu as its General Entertainment division’s head of integration and programme management.
Portia has worked at MultiChoice Group for 11 years in several leadership positions.
She was initially involved in the rollout of GOtv and Clarity platforms for MultiChoice Africa before moving to Connected Video.
In that capacity, she built operations capabilities, drove programme management, and led DStv Streaming and Showmax collaboration across the group, MultiChocie said.
“In her time, she led organisation-wide initiatives to drive Showmax add-to-bill subscriber growth and deliver streaming platform stability, which contributed to the success of the FIFA World Cup viewing experience,” MultiChoice said.
“She has most recently been programme lead in the relaunch of Showmax with Comcast.”
MultiChoice said due to the crucial role Portia played in the Showmax relaunch programme, she would formally assume her new role post-launch on 1 January 2024.
That would imply that the Peacock-supported Showmax service will launch sometime before the end of 2023.
MultiChoice told MyBroadband that its timeframe for the launch remains unchanged, so it could only happen by the end of the financial year (March 2023).
Kemi Omotosho, newly-appointed MultiChoice regional director for Southern Africa (left), and Portia Heshu, newly-appointed General Entertainment head of integration and programme management.
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