HARARE — Two months after its launch, 1st TV — which broadcasts from an undisclosed location in South Africa into Zimbabwe, on free-to-air satellite decoders and the internet — is going off air as its financial resources dwindle, it said on Friday.Launched a few days before the July 31 national election, the television station promised to provide millions of viewers with an alternative voice to the state-controlled Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation (ZBC), used as an instrument of praise for President Robert Mugabe and his ruling Zanu (PF) party.Zanu (PF) denounced the launch of 1st TV as a weapon funded by the West to effect illegal regime change and vowed to "cripple" the TV station.Andrew Chadwick, a former political lieutenant in Morgan Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change, is understood to have been at the helm of the TV station, which also employed veteran journalists Temba Hove and Violet Gonda, who interviewed various political players during its brief life span.The st...
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