EMCOAN, NBC Partner on Digitization

Mrs. Debbie Odutayo, president of the Electronic Media Content Owners Association of Nigeria, (EMCOAN), has expressed her satisfaction over the willingness of the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC), to collaborate with her association for a successful digitization of the broadcast industry in Nigeria.

Even though the regulatory body failed to achieve the June 2015 digital switch-over deadline, she said that better and deeper collaboration with major stakeholders such as her association (which is responsible for over 85% of media content in Nigeria) would largely contribute to a successful actualization of the new target date.

Odutayo stated that the NBC is now taking the bull by the horns, with the facilitation of EMCOAN’s participation in international events such as Mipcom which holds in France in October 2015.

She said this was a good step in the right direction as there can be no effective switch-over if the content owners were not carried along in the process.

According to her, digitization worldwide demonstrates that industry and political considerations prevail in the discussions concerning the planning and the implementation of the digital switchover policies.

Regulators in Nigeria hitherto failed to recognize the inherent opportunities of using readily available expertise at its disposal just as consultation across board were not wide enough.

She particularly lamented the manner in which members of EMCOAN were left out of the entire process even with its strategic position as a body of TV and radio programme producers.

In the next 18 months as extended by NBC, Nigeria can join the likes of Ghana, which appears to have gone ahead and readily serves as benchmark—where a simulcast service is run by TV stations such that a set-up box could easily receive more than 20 DTT channels; as well as Tanzania which has also made significant progress in the African television industry since it migrated to digital in December 2012 and fully establishing it in April 2015.

Mrs. Odutayo reiterated that her association is fully ready to work in partnership with NBC in order to achieve its digitization goals.

In her words, “EMCOAN is open to working with the NBC, if approached, to throw our heavy weight behind the regulatory body by deploying our viable platform and resources to sensitizing the generality of Nigerians on the massive change of switching from analogue to digital broadcasting.”