Media Niugini Limited is now fully-owned by Papua New Guinea’s state-owned enterprise, Telikom PNG Limited.

This was after Fiji Television Limited announced the full divestment of its shares with a negotiation price of 20m kina (F$14.28m) for sale of Media Niugini.

Earlier this month, Telikom handed over a mandatory deposit of 2million kina (F$1.43m) to Fiji TV.

The deal was made at Ra Marama House with the presence of Fiji TV’s parent company, Fijian Holdings Limited, Telikom, PNG EMTV and Media Niugini executives yesterday.

Since October last year, Fiji TV had been looking for potential buyers and finally sealed the deal with Telikom PNG.

Telikom PNG Group chief executive Michael Donnelly said the people in PNG were excited of the ownership.

“For Telikom, we have a large infrastructure across the country that we really want to use to leverage from an analog service to a digital service,” Mr Donnelly said.

“People today want to take their technology around and watch content. So for us, we are a telephony, data and wireless company and we also own some media assets so that way we will use our platform to carry the message across.

“The ability for EMTV to produce local content, to be able to get out there and gather the news across the country will now be enhanced with the resources and infrastructure of Telikom,” he said.

One of the major reasons for the sale of Media Niugini was because of the competition which entered the PNG market in recent years, Mr Fareed said.

Hence, the initial sale and purchase of 27 million Kina (F$21 million) was unsuccessful because of the failure to secure the rights to National Rugby League (NRL) in PNG.

The rights to air NRL was lost to Media Nuigini Limited’s competitor, TVWAN, a subsidiary of Digicel Play.

Edited by Ranoba Baoa

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