The Nation Newspaper

Tag: Digital broadcasting

  • FEC tasks MDAs on 2017 digital broadcasting deadline

    FEC tasks MDAs on 2017 digital broadcasting deadline

    The Federal Executive Council (FEC) on Wednesday directed relevant Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) to collaborate effectively to ensure Nigeria meets the June 2017 global deadline for migration from analogue to digital broadcasting.

    They are expected ‎to follow up on the success and ensure that Nigeria is not left out of worldwide digital broadcasting by June next year.

    Briefing State House correspondents at the end of the FEC meeting presided by President Muhammadu Buhari, the Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, said that the issue was the only discussion during the meeting.

    According to him, the migration in line with the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) will enable Nigerians continue to receive television signals after the deadline.

    He said that the pilot scheme for the migration, which was ‎ carried out in Jos, Plateau State in April using special set-up boxes to provide free digital signals of 15 broadcast stations, has been successful.

    He also explained that the funds for the project about N34 billion are available and contracts have been awarded for the supply of the digital set-up boxes at affordable prices to Nigerians.

    The Minister explained that the new digital migration policy‎ entails that signal distributors will thenceforth be solely responsible for sending out broadcast signals to the public consumers while broadcast content will be the responsibility of station owners.

    He said: “The main highlights of today’s council meeting are the swearing in of the four special advisers and permanent secretary for foreign affairs after which only one single council memo was considered and that council memo was a note in respect of an update from my ministry in the process of migrating from analogue to digital broadcasting, as you are aware the ITU gave a deadline to migrate from analogue to digital broadcasting June 2017.

    “Already the pilot scheme in Jos which was successfully deployed at the end of April is working very well and today those who are in possession of our set up boxes can view 15 channels with clarity in Jos.

    “And the highlights of today’s council meeting is that council reaffirmed its support for us to meet the deadline of 2017 June and directed that the relevant ministries work together to achieve these deadline.

    Asked why FEC deliberated on only the issue while there are hunger and hardship in the land, he said: “Yes Nigeria might be going through a very difficult time it doesn’t mean that we are going to be cut off from the rest of the world. 20 years ago Ethiopia had a famine that ravaged the whole country they have risen from the ashes of that famine to become one of the strongest economies of the world.

    “The fact that we are facing temporary problems does not mean that we are not going to be at pace with technology development all over the world. This is a global issue; it simply means that if we do not move from analogue to digital broadcasting we may not be able to even receive signals on your television.” He said

    Apart from the government assisting to subsidize in getting the boxes, he said that the digital migration is going to create jobs.

    He said: “Look at the opportunities it offers our young men who are very talented to provide content to television stations. So it’s going to impact very largely on the broadcast industry, even piracy which has been a menace to us today, with digitalisation it means that musicians and film makers can release their films or records direct on digital broadcast such as video on demand and we are now going to cut off the entire pirate network which has been a bane to our creative industry.

    “If we look at the advantages of digitalisation in terms of changing the entire economy of providing more jobs for the people, even the 13 manufacturers of set up box who have been licensed, two of them already are producing are also going to employ but I think that the fact that we have a temporary setback does not mean we are going to be cut off from the entire world,” He stated.

  • Digital broadcasting: Dangers loom, warns NBC

    The National Broadcasting Commission (NBC) has warned that in spite of the limitless opportunities digital broadcasting will unleash on the nation, dangers lurk in the corner if the right contents are not developed and made available to the citizens.

    Its Director-General, Is’haq Modibbo Kawu, who gave the warning in Lagos during a summit on Broadcast Content and National Security, said broadcasting regulatory institution such as NBC must be at the cutting edge of developments in the challenging world of 21st Century broadcasting. He expressed the hope that Digital Switch Over (DSO) will be achieved by June, 2017, though it will immediately confront newer challenges that will task institutional abilities.

    He said: “Reflect on a broadcasting scenario with tens upon tens of new television stations (will open services); they will purvey all manners of content, challenging our sensibilities, in ways that we probably cannot even begin to imagine today. Yet, broadcasting in general is not just about the technical realities of studios, transmitters or even the personnel; at its heart is content.

    “But there are potentially negative implications too. In the extreme, there are anti-state forces willing to take advantage of the openings becoming increasingly available to all of us, to subvert national security. “Can broadcast content become an avenue to subvert national security? The possibilities are real, especially with what we have seen of secessionist groups in some parts of the country; they have set up radio stations broadcasting inciting and subversive content. There is also the terrorism of Boko Haram, and its recent efforts to even launch a radio station on the border between Nigeria and Cameroun, as reported in the past month, in the media. These groups are using the internet to post chauvinistic, unpatriotic and often subversive, content. They are contesting the spaces of our national history and seeking to win the minds of the young, with narratives and discourses that challenge our nationhood and wellbeing. As I said, these are the extreme ends of the broadcast content debacle.”

    According to him, the lower end of the stratum is how good old Not to be Broadcast (NTBB) materials have continued to shift in directions that will give the pause to old school broadcasters, adding that in the past content was everything because practitioners then were cultured into a tradition of respect for the ethos of broadcasting; values which seemed to have become increasingly eroded, sadly, as most values have given way at several levels in the country.

    Kawu said the NBC management realised the historic importance of the new phase of DSO; its exciting possibilities and the dangers that might be lurking in the process for national security stressing that the Commission is thinking of resourcefulness and insight that would deal with issues such as religion and ethnicity; family, the home and social well-being; the variety of cultures that waters the streams of national cultures. Others are diversity and mutual respect between individual citizens and people and communities; peaceful conduct; conflicts management; separatist agitations and insurgencies; the straining relations between sedentary farming communities and nomadic communities; problems of education of the young and the exposure to imperialist media content, to mention a few.

  • Digital broadcasting: FG rakes in N1.8bn from signal distribution

    Digital broadcasting: FG rakes in N1.8bn from signal distribution

    The Federal Government has realised N1.8 billion from the licenses issued to three signal distributors on the switch over from analogue to digital broadcasting.

    The Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, disclosed this on Wednesday in Abuja at a media briefing on the pilot roll-out of the Digital Switch Over (DSO).

    The minister inaugurated the pilot roll-out of DSO last Saturday in Jos, Plateau State, after several delay and postponements, the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports.

    Mohammed said the three licensed signal distributors, one from the public sector and the other two from the private sector, paid N600 million each.

    He explained that Nigeria Television Authority (NTA) which was initially given the license as public distributor engaged was constraint by broadcasting rules.

    “Under the new broadcasting arrangement, the rule does not allow a producer of content to be a carrier of content.

    “As a result of this, NTA has to go for a Special Purpose Vehicle which is a private company called ITS. We now have ITS, as the signal distributor for public sector,’’ he said.

    He said Pinnacle Communications Limited and MTS Communications Limited were licensed as private sector signal distributors.

    The minister assured that the controversy on the signal distributorship which led to a N1.2 trillion damages suit filed by Pinnacle would be resolved out of court amicably.

     

  • Digital broadcasting: The pain before the gain

    Digital broadcasting: The pain before the gain

    Digital television broadcasting and the challenges ahead of its implementation dominated discussions at the Southwest zone meeting of the Broadcasting Organisation of Nigeria (BON) held in Lagos. Assistant Editor SEUN AKIOYE looks at the prominent issues in the digitalisation era.

    When Segun Olaleye, the Executive Secretary, Broadcasting Organisations of Nigeria (BON) finished his short presentation on how digital television would affect the practise of broadcasting in the future, the Combo Hall inside Lagos Television complex, Agidingbi Lagos went very quiet.

    Immediate past chairman of BON Southwest zone, Ayinde Soaga took the microphone and said what was probably playing on everyone’s mind. “ The truth is indeed bitter,” he began and told his colleagues about the need to either key into the new and emerging technologies which he said is changing “our lives and the way we live” or get lost or left behind.

    It was the zonal meeting of the Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) of radio and television stations in the Southwest. A two-day strategic meeting designed to deliberate on the future of broadcasting in the digital age. It was also a time to take stock and elect a new chairman that would steer the affairs of the organisation for the next two years.

    The host, Deji Balogun, General Manager, Lagos Television was lavish in his acknowledgement of the honour of hosting the meeting. He said the station has been at the forefront of noble initiatives and pace setting in 35 years of “quality broadcasting.” Balogun said LTV is the only state television station that can be viewed on three different cable satellite channels namely: DSTV 256, Startimes 104 and CONSAT.

    Television will never be the same

    On June 30, 2015, Nigeria and 51 other African countries missed the deadline set by ITU, the United Nations agency for information and communications technology for the global broadcasting world to switch over from analogue to digital broadcasting.

    The broadcasting executives were not surprised. For one, not many of them were prepared for the complete  change the switchover would bring. According to Olaleye, when the switchover finally commences, broadcasting in Nigeria will not remain the same.

    The BON executive who took his colleagues through the technicalities of the digital switch over said it came up as a result of the emerging trend in world technology. Part of the changes that will occur is the total reconfiguration of television broadcasting in the country. For instance, today, all television stations have individual transmitters, in the switchover, there will be what Olaleye called a “compression, there will be no more stations but channels.”

    “Olaleye: “There are a lot of wastages in the analogue system and the switchover will be the process of compression. There will not be individual stations as we now have but all of them will be compressed into channels with a single signal distributor servicing all of them.”

    He explained that all digital transmitters owned by the stations will be bought off by the signal distributor and all broadcast would be done through this channel. Every television station would be required to broadcast through a single digital channel provided by the signal distributor. What would be required for the ‘channel’ is to have studio where recordings would be made and transmitted to the signal distributor for onward transmission to the nation.

    But there are other finer details. Each station now channel would be required obtain a license either for regional or national broadcasting.   Also there will be two categories of broadcast namely the Free To Air (FTA), which will be free for all viewers- most of the existing television stations will be here- and the Pay TV.

    For the Nigerian viewers, the era of free television is gone. Every television owner would also be required to obtain a sector box (similar to the current Pay TV decoder) which will convert the current analogue signals to digital. On the sector box, all FTA will be free according to their different licenses. For those who do not have a sector decoder, they will be unable to watch any channel again.

    Loss of jobs?

    The media executives are wary of the attendant loss of jobs of television workers. “The television of tomorrow will not be bogus and most of the infrastructures we have today will not be needed. All you need is a small studio where you will produce your content, your signal will be on another platform,” Olaleye said.

    Finding the content that would appeal to an increasingly insatiable audience in the midst of a competitive market is a big challenge. It would require new skills and thinking out of the norm.

    That would leave thousands of engineers, cameramen, reporters, copy writers, editors and other television workers jobless. There are also the infrastructures, studios, buildings currently owned by stations which would be totally useless and dilapidated.

    There are cost implications for the viewers. Each sector box would cost a token fee of N1, 500 and it will come with an internet and PVR dongle. There will be 30 channels to watch and a maintenance fee of N1, 000 annually. For those who wish to watch channels on pay TV, there will be an additional cost.

    Gbolahan Olalemi of Television Continental said a pilot scheme of digitization will be put in place in Plateau state in November 2015. Explaining further, on the cost implications he said content providers (stations) will be required to pay for licences to the signal distributors, 1.5 percent of their annual revenue and five minutes of airtime for advertisement for the signal distributor.  He said after the pilot scheme, the Southwest region will be next. Already 13 decoder manufactures have been approved in the next months; 40 million decoders will be produced.

    Deji Balogun said the challenges as identified is real and the broadcasters should start thinking of how to enact a constitutional change to allow broadcasters collect television and radio licence fees. “How protected are we? This is the time we should cooperate, it is not the time for competition,” he said.

    The meeting did not end without a silver lining. Balogun was elected as the new chairman of BON Southwest zone, together with his team he will have the gruelling duty of ushering in the digital era in broadcasting. Balogun said he will be counting on the support of his colleagues to move the organisation forward.