To understand what’s happening here, you have to unpack anodyne press statements with enough corporate-speak to drown the smart and the cynical.

There are many analogies between Shane Smith and Jason Njoku.

And now there is one more: they are both moving from online pioneers to traditional media juggernauts in their play for profitability and markets.

And they both talk a good game, as they pivot left and right to a place called Success.

Last week Thursday, iROKO’s film production arm, Rok Studios (founded in 2013) launched on the United Kingdom’s Skye TV as a “a free-to-view for all Sky subscribers (that’s about 10 million homes in the UK).

“ROK on Sky will air Rok Studios originals (like Single Ladies, Banks Chronicles and Bloodline) and all programming and scheduling will be done by both Rok teams in Lagos and London.”

His wife, Mary Remmy Njoku who is also a Nollywood actress, runs it.

It’s remarkable because this is not iROKO’s first linear TV play. It has two channels on the StarTimes network (iROKO World and iROKO play) and has 2 hour daily slots on Galaxy TV.

In essence, like Vice’s Smith has found: the Internet may be the future, but there is a present that demands you obey the rules of gravity, at least if you need to drive revenue numbers.

There is some wisdom there for Nigeria’s army of iROKO-TV inspiring tech and media entrepreneurs shopping around for ‘Internet is the future’ business ideas in a slow-evolving market.

PS: See anything worth talking about on the ins and outs of the media business in Nigeria on TV, radio, print and online (could be news, tweets, photos, op-eds etc) send us a mail on [email protected] titled TMB. Let’s share the insight together!

YWriter