Safari Television to stop game drives after July 31st

I have some very sad news to share with you all today. Due to financial reasons Safari Television will have to stop operating and broadcasting game drives from Djuma at the end of this month. Technical issues related to various areas of the broadcast and its distribution have prevented us from generating sufficient revenue to cover our running costs. Without further significant investment in equipment this can not be changed and such funds are currently unavailable. We've explored many avenues to generate additional income, but running an operation such as we have based on mainly internet revenue is just not viable.

Stopping our activities and broadcasts has been a difficult and emotional decision to take, for ourselves, but mostly because of the impact on our crew in Djuma who are now unfortunately will be without a job despite having worked tirelessly to help us try turn things around. On top of bringing you two safaris each day, they worked hard on other projects before, between and after these drives. It's very disappointing that we've been unable to turn all this effort into sufficient revenue to keep operating the game drives and our main concern at this point is doing what we can to minimise the impact on them.

Then it's also sad to have to say goodbye to you, our loyal viewers, those who recently discovered us, and especially those that have been on drives with us from the very beginning. Our last drive is planned to take place on July 31st and together with the crew we are planning some events around that to make it a proper goodbye. (We will share more on this during the next week.)

One thing I already would like to announce now is that Peter will work with the crew to set up an online ‘tipping jar’. Just as lodge guests have the opportunity to thank their rangers and trackers for a great experience, we want to give you the chance to thank those that have brought so many great safaris and wonderful waterhole sightings into your homes and offices. The exact details around this will be shared with you early next week.

As there will undoubtedly be many questions around this announcement and what will happen between now and July 31st (and afterwards) we’ve created an e-mail to send these to: lastdrive@wildearthsafari.tv, we will receive and answer these. We also encourage you to post in the discussion area of Safari Television on Facebook or in a special forum we created on WildEarths Ning network. One thing to note is that this only affects Safari Television's operations, the Djuma waterhole camera and other cameras on WildEarth.tv will continue operating as before.


I want to end for now by once again expressing my gratitude to in particular our crew on site for all their hard work and to you, our viewers, who've stuck with us through all the challenges we've faced.


--Will Fox