MultiChoice Africa opens History Channel to DStv Compact subscribers

This month, MultiChoice Africa continues to bring its Compact Subscribers more entertainment and value with the HISTORY® channel open month. The channel will be available to all DStv’s Compact subscribers across Africa from Monday, June 13 to Monday, July 11.

Making its debut on HISTORY® (DStv 186) on Wednesday, June 15 at 7:30pm, is the highly- anticipated television event Roots, the four-part, eight-hour series developed by HISTORY and produced by A+E Studios. During this four week open-window HISTORY will broadcast new and exclusive shows, along with top-rated return titles that Compact subscribers will not have had access to previously. Roots will also be repeated on Lifetime on Sundays at 8pm (from June 19) following its debut on HISTORY.

Based on the best-selling novel by Alex Haley, Roots recounts the journey of one family’s will to survive, endure, and ultimately carry on their legacy despite enormous hardship and inhumanity.

“Nearly 40 years ago I had the privilege to be a part of an epic television event that started an important conversation in America,” said LeVar Burton, co-executive producer and the actor who played the lead role of Kunta Kinte in the original 1977 version. “I am incredibly proud to be a part of this new retelling and start the dialogue again, at a time when it is needed more than ever.”

Spanning multiple generations, the lineage begins with young Kunta Kinte, who is captured in his homeland of The Gambia and sold into slavery. Throughout the series, the family continues to face adversity that reveals powerful truths about the universal resilience of the human spirit.

Starring in the series are Academy Award® winners Forest Whitaker (“Fiddler”) and Anna Paquin (“Nancy Holt”); Academy Award® nominee and Emmy Award® winner Laurence Fishburne (“Alex Haley”); Golden Globe Award® winning and Emmy Award® nominated actor Jonathan Rhys Meyers (“Tom Lea”); Tony Award® winner Anika Noni Rose (“Kizzy”); Grammy Award® winner Tip “T.I.” Harris (“Cyrus”); Emayatzy Corinealdi (“Belle”); Matthew Goode (“Dr. William Waller”); Mekhi Phifer (“Jerusalem”); James Purefoy (“John Waller”) and introduces Regé-Jean Page (“Chicken George”) and Malachi Kirby (“Kunta Kinte”), originally played by LeVar Burton who is Co-Executive Producer in the new ‘Roots.’