Broadcast Regulators Task Stations on Revenue, Equipment

Mallam Abubakar Jijiwa, chairman, Broadcasting Organisation of Nigeria (Bon) has urged government owned broadcast stations to devise means of generating revenue in order to stay in business.
According to him, “private stations are surviving on their own without government’s intervention. It’s a free market and these (government owned) stations have to go to the marketplace and compete for revenue. They should learn to be creative in their programming and generate revenue like the private stations are doing.”
“Let them stop singing favourite songs of their governors and become marketable. Let them carve a niche for themselves in the market - there are no two ways about it. Government can still assist in some ways but they have to take charge of their own welfare for survival,” he insisted.
Ahead of the 2012 deadline for switchover to digital broadcasting, broadcast stations across Nigeria have complained of shortage of funds for the acquisition of digital-ready equipment for broadcast services.
To this end, Yomi Bolarinwa, director-general, National Broadcasting Commission (NBC) has clearly stated that “In Nigeria today, over 60 percent of the broadcast stations in their studios and production have digital equipment.” Thus, the clamour for funds for transition to digital broadcasting was baseless.
Addressing broadcasters at the 51st General Assembly of Bon in Lagos, the NBC boss frowned upon the acquisition of transmitters by broadcast stations, which he said was a waste of resources.
 “Stations go ahead and buy high capacity transmitters that they do not need. Who are you transmitting to? Have you considered your target audience? If you have a station in Lagos and you put another one in Abeokuta - like is happening to FRCN and NTA today -  then your stations start competing among themselves, does that make sense? As we are not doing proper planning, we now have an opportunity with the digital plan, and we should get it right.”
“If we do not get it right, the level of interference we have on FM radio will be a child’s play compared to what we would have on television. On FM you can accommodate interference, but on TV you will have a ‘venetian blind’ (horizontal black and white lines without any picture),” he warned.
On the issue of High Definition (HD) equipment, Engr. Bolarinwa noted that broadcast stations wantonly acquire HD equipment without putting the viewers into consideration. “We easily assume that HD is digital, so everybody today says he’s going HD. That is not true! HD is just a by-product of digital. Even today on the analogue platform, you can do HD. Now, in buying HD equipment that are relatively new in the market and are expensive, what do we hope to achieve? Do you have a complete chain of HD studio equipment? Can your transmitter handle HD? Do the viewers at home have the wherewithal to receive HD content and appreciate it? If along the broadcast chain it is broken, you have wasted money buying HD equipment.”
“Both private and government owned stations behave the same way in the acquisition of equipment. All the cost that they complain about today are self-inflicted. Stations now buy high capacity transmitters that they do not need, and the enormous power needed to run them increases their operational cost,” he continued.
The broadcast regulator added that if broadcast stations want to do HD programming, they must buy a complete chain of equipment, but then they must think of their customers who do not have HD devices.