EbonyLife’s Mo Abudu on Why Mainstream Players “Haven’t Actually Invested That Much in Diverse Content”

Mo Abudu, founder and CEO of EbonyLife Group and one of THR‘s most influential women in TV, says her company can succeed and make money with content targeted towards a passionate Black niche audience, even if entertainment industry giants may not.

Appearing during a Content London panel on Tuesday, the British-Nigerian founder executive was asked if she could make money with a focus on serving up diversity-focused content in a direct-to-consumer model. She replied by saying explaining her “local-for-global” niche audience focus in an age of digital disruption. “Nobody is beholden to anybody anymore,” she emphasized. “We are living in a world where you are beholden to what you watch, so you can’t control my audience anymore. I’m making content for a specific audience, for that niche. … Because it’s enough for my niche. It may not be enough for the larger corporations, which is, I guess, why the larger mainstream broadcasters haven’t actually invested that much in diverse content, simply because maybe it’s not making enough money for them.”

She didn’t hold back when she added: “We can employ all the diversity officers that we like in the world, and they could keep canvassing year after year for more diverse content, but the truth is that only a certain number, only a certain percentage” will get picked up by them.

For EbonyLife, which has made headlines with everything from local box office hits The Wedding Party and Òlòtūré to global deals with Netflix and Sony, it is a different story. Highlighted the exec, who has been dubbed “the Queen of African media”: “If you create a platform that is specifically speaking to an audience that has never been tapped into, you are definitely going to get better [results] because you’re making content that is speaking to them, and you are monetizing because they’re paying.” And, Abudu concluded with a nod to being able to manage costs due to being a smaller and more nimble player: “I don’t have some of the overhead that some of the larger corporations have.”