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Broadcasting & Entertainment

Broadcast Houses Should Be Developers Of People's Culture And Values- Ojo

	The broadcast industry in Nigeria has no doubt come of age but consumers believe it is still far from eureka. From content to programming and then to specialization, Nigeria's broadcast industry is still battling to meet with international standards. Consumers are worried that the future is everything but assuring for the industry. However, a veteran and president/chief executive officer of high flying Galaxy Television, Chief Steve Ojo x-rays the industry in Nigeria and maintains that several factors are responsible for the anomalies therein. He spoke about several issues in the industry as well his outfit's readiness for the take-off of digital broadcasting in 2015. The interview was conducted by FRANCA ENEGBETA…

In the beginning

Galaxy is an indigenous broadcast media and by the grace of God, I think I remain the oldest broadcaster in Nigeria today having joined in the mid 60s and today, I am still in the business which I have so much passion for.

The station was established because my major specialization has been television and film production. I joined television in the mid 60s after secondary school and I worked in the old WNTV, WNBS which influenced me to be a broadcaster. I enjoyed my job there so much that I began dreaming of having a career in broadcasting, not thinking I will be able to set up a television station.

The good thing about it was that I was in the engineering department of the technical office. I was so good in the job that within a year, I was seconded to head one of the transmitting stations in Ishara even when I had seniors years ahead of me. I headed that department and today, some of the people I trained on the job are chief engineers in different places. One of them is the chief engineer of the Ministry of Housing, a position he has held for over thirteen years.

Galaxy Television is the first private television station in Nigeria having been given the license no 001. We were the first to set up a broadcast television in Nigeria but we set up in Ibadan; the reason being that when we applied for Lagos, we were told that there was a cluster, meaning that there was no more frequency in the spectrum in Lagos. So we had no choice but to be contented with having a television station in Ibadan.

I was happy about it because that was where broadcasting started in Africa. Again, Ibadan is the headquarters of the Yorubas and taking Galaxy Television there was like taking Galaxy to the head of the Yoruba Kingdom or Empire. At the time we got our license, the late Sani Abacha was head of state and because of the problems suffered by the Yorubas then, we thought it will be a unification medium for the race.

There are a number of things involved in setting up a broadcast media. The first is you have to have good money ranging to hundreds of millions. The good thing about Galaxy Television was that, in addition to having little money; our greatest asset was experience and know-how. Some of our colleagues set up their own broadcast stations with N300million plus but we started with just over N100million. And if you look at the situation today, even in starting with such lesser money, we are the best station in Oyo State and the second best in Lagos State. So, it is not enough to have money, it is also good to have experience and know how; it is the know-how that has helped us.

We have not only contributed to the economic development of Nigeria, we have in no small measure contributed to the growth of democracy in Nigeria and we remain the vanguard of democracy promotion in Nigeria. One, we have hundreds of people employed. Secondly, in a retirement centre like Ibadan, we have created awareness to develop the small industries in the area so they can develop to bigger ones.

We have programmes like 'Democracy and the Rule of Law' created to educate Nigerians on the rule of law and the sustenance of democracy in Nigeria. We have 'Editors Forum', an intellectual discussion programme that features academic experts, politicians, and editors to talk on topical issues with the view of moving the nation forward. There is the 'National Pulse', a programme that deals with the different governments in Nigeria that are not doing well.
We are not afraid to speak the truth because we believe that we should project democracy in Nigeria. If we have leaders that are not practicing democracy well in Nigeria, we are

encouraging the Army to come back. We worked so hard to drive them back to the barracks. The best we can do for Nigeria today is to put our politicians to check so they can adhere to the democratic rules, and allow the growth of democracy.

We have accepted that government of the people, by the people, and for the people, is the best kind of government for Nigeria, but what is it like in Nigeria today? It has become for the rich who only go there to steal our money. We elect leaders to be servants and they end up being our lords- taking the money of the people to different shores of the world that would not help the development of Nigeria.

So “Democracy and the Rule of Law” is a programme that I formulated to see to the promotion of democracy and thrash out all the problems that we are faced with in Nigeria's democracy. For instance, during the regime of Chief Obasanjo, we used “Democracy and the Rule of Law” to attack him in a way to redirect him to the part of democratic growth in adhering to the rules of democracy. We got calls from the party chieftains telling us to stop the programme.

Even the National Broadcasting Commission, the regulatory body, sent us letters twice to stop the programme. But we refused to stop. Our stand was “If we had done something illegal, then let them take us to court. But if it is for the promotion of democratic values, we are ready to pay the price”.So, when it comes to the truth, we don't care about losing our lives for it. We are stubborn for the truth. Just as the likes of Chief Gani Fawehinmi and others are aiming to promote the Yoruba culture in Nigeria through different pressure groups, we are doing ours with television.

Television broadcasting for us is not all about money but more of adding values to Nigeria, adding value to the people of Nigeria and moving Nigeria forward to be at par with the international community. We must use television for economic and political growth and that is what Galaxy has been doing. Today we have trophies to attest to the fact that the people are happy with what we are doing.

Selling points
Our uniqueness is on our programme contents. Local content is very important in broadcasting and I must praise the people who formulated the rules of broadcasting in Nigeria because even before license is given to a broadcaster, we were mandated to do 60% local content and 40% foreign content. The idea is to be able to develop our cultures and values and to be able to pass these values to the generations yet unborn.

Looking at the world today, you will discover that our children are even more “Americanized” than the Americans. The ladies are going naked because they have cultural deficiency. All the values that we grew up with are completely gone. Showing local content is an indirect way of letting people imbibe the culture of the nation because the foreign programmes have no cultural relevance.
When a culture looses its own value and takes on a foreign culture, then you are completely finished. What makes us Nigerians and Africans is our culture. Galaxy TV happens to be the station with the largest amount of local contents in this country. Way back from our inception, we started with 85% local content instead of the mandated 60%, whereas most of the other stations were doing 80% foreign. But we have stuck to local content for 16 years and today the advantages are beginning to manifest as the audience now prefer local

programmes which are of international standard. For this we have soap operas like, The Patriots, which is a NAFDAC story featuring most of Nigeria's top artistes like Joke Silva, Kanayo. O. Kanayo amongst others. We also have Super Story, which bothers on life situations and a host of others. We have and are still pioneering most of Nigeria's Nollywood artistes and this has brought us popularity and has also brought us to the limelight both in Oyo and Lagos States.

Challenges cum way forward
The quality of graduates that come out of our universities is appalling; it is terrible. The head of my technical department, who is also my most useful technical personnel in that department, is a guy that does not even have school certificate and he bosses about five to six graduates who cannot even fix a bulb. So the simplest way that I can refer to the appalling condition of our universities is that, the guy who repairs all our equipments and teaches graduates does not even have school certificate whereas those from the universities are the ones giving us problems.

Our school environment is not conducive for studies; we have cultists on campus, we have undedicated professors and lecturers not competent to impact knowledge. We have incessant strike actions that prevent students from acquiring good knowledge and most importantly, students don't have the technical environment to study. Once these students come out of the universities, they are so far from the minimum requirements. The reason why we hire them is because of the will to help Nigerians.
When they stay in our environment for few months, they will acquire what they were unable to acquire in the University for five to six years and we think we have been able to achieve much on that. The advantage that I had is that I grew up in the broadcast industry (WNTV); broadcasters were well taught then and it was a practical job. We even had a television and a radio station from where we learnt.

The university broadcasting studio should be well equipped. They don't have to have all the equipment, but the basics should be there so that they can teach the students practically. They can also bring people from broadcast environment on intermediate basis to come and impact knowledge on these students.

I wouldn't mind if they come to us. I have gone to most of the universities in the country urging them to send their students to Galaxy to acquire knowledge. But none of them responded. Rather we heard that each time we used most of their students for programmes, the professors were not happy.

They claim that the students don't listen to them anymore because they see themselves as professionals; because what they are supposed to do and know as graduates, are being exposed to them while they are still in school. So, most of their professors were not happy that they are acquiring practical knowledge.

I went as far as giving one of the Universities money to produce one of their scripts and for over ten years nothing came out of it. We are encouraging these institutions but are they ready to accept the help we are giving them?

The Universities should have contact with the television stations and ask for the expertise of these stations so that on time basis they can teach the students. Years back, I placed an advert for staff vacancy. I had professors who came, but they were not employable. Some even came from the School of Journalism, and I was elated when I got their applications, hoping to make them Head of Departments. But they did not even pass. So how can you employ such people to impact knowledge? Though there are brilliant ones. That is why we are saying that there should be a harmony between the media and the institutions.

On the issue of internship, most of these IT students are supposed to have their training, for at least one year, but most of them spent higher parts of the months playing. And when they have few months to go, you see them coming to us to tell us they have three or two months to go. How can they acquire knowledge? The institutions should monitor them, because since I have been admitting students for IT, I have not seen any school that has sent either staff or otherwise to monitor their students. So, there has to be the willingness by the institutions to monitor, and a willingness to talk to media houses on how many students to come for internship on a particular media house to enable them in turn do their own monitoring.

On meeting the digital broadcasting switch-over

Simply put, digital broadcasting is the next generation of broadcasting norms. For instance, we have been used to analogue. But now digital is another level forward, an improvement to broadcasting and we are quite confident that Nigeria broadcasting and Galaxy Television specifically can meet up with the ITU set standard for a full blown digital broadcasting.

Here in Galaxy, we already have digital transmitter, both in Ibadan and in Lagos stations and we are not supposed to conform to this system till about ten years from now. But we have had to get equipment to bring it down to analogue again so that Nigerians can see it. This is because with the digital system, Nigerians cannot receive signals because they don't use digital television set yet.

You can only receive signal from a digital transmitter if they have a digital television set. Or you acquire a small box and attach to your system like they do in London before you can get signals. But because nobody in Nigeria has that, we have had to go and acquire an analogue modulator so that Nigerians can receive our signals. We are ready because most of our transmitters are digital.

The next level for galaxy is on first and foremost, investing more on local contents. But in the area of broadcasting, we are waiting on the Government to give us a National radio and television license to showcase all over the nation, local contents that are of international level.

We support the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA), as a big brother in broadcasting but we are saying that we need a national license to enable us transmit to every state in the country and enable us work together with NTA and share with them programmes that they are unable to produce.

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