Nigerian TV Industry.... A Short Appraisal

Right from 1959 when the Western Region blazed the trail by setting up WNTV (Western Nigerian Television) as the first tv station in Africa, the Nigerian tv industry has steadily evolved from black-and-white or greyscale transmissions into technicolor of monumental sorts! With an upswing in technology also came an improvement in quality of programme content and delivery.

Talk shows! Music competitions! Reality shows!
With an upgrade of transmitted pictures into color in the early 70s right through to these days when we now have a choice between terrestrial and cable streaming, viewers of today can have the cinema experience right in their homes at the touch of a button...sorry, the remote!

And that brings another angle... tv receivers have come a long way from the old cannon boxes to flat-screen plasma and LCD displays complete with OSD (on-screen display), internet connectivity, touch-screen capabilities, multi-channel displays, timers for pre-planned recordings, wake-up, reminders, switch-off and so on!

TV CONTENT AND DELIVERY.
While the good old stations like the NTA, OGTV and LTV still have the best presenters by way of diction, the same cannot be said of their programme content especially their news bulletins which can sometimes so annoy you you want to smash your tv screen!

Lousily enough, the cited stations make no pretences at being anything other than mere mouthpieces of government and their operatives obtuse towncriers!

AIT quite unfortunately, is lacking in both quality content and delivery! As their presenters ramble on as if they come on air with aliquots of glue tethering their tongues to their palates....and so incapable of ever pronouncing any word correctly, you wonder why they do not find other things to do!

Pronunciation is so "wowo" especially by those AIT presenters with multi-syllabic tongue-splitting names who are townsmen of the owner....with whom he must staff the station....!

Daar Communications the parent company, seems to reserve its good presenters for its radio station, Raypower FM. Before I forget, our local radio stations are heads and shoulders above their tv counterparts in programme content and delivery...most definitely!

NEWS.
Listen to news aired by any of these four stations and all you hear is one correspondent report on one conference, meeting or workshop....or the other....annoyingly spiced with all the statements made by government functionaries they fancy! Minister A said this! Commissioner B has "reiterated" that...! Special Adviser C just farted without pissing! Haba! Don't these goons know what and what items are newsworthy? Don't they do regular viewer surveys for feedback? Abi, what do they teach them in journalism school?

And there are stations like Channels Tv that keep recycling the same news bulletins for upwards of 24 hours, so commitedly you wonder if their wins as "best tv station for the 9th time" were not facilitated by the deep pockets of their owners!

MUSIC AND MOVIES.
Again, Channels Tv. This particular station seem to hate anything and everything Nigerian.... apparel, music, movies....so much it never airs our local music or moves nor permit its presenters to don our local attires...you suspect an ingrained inferiority complex in its proprietor! Agbadas, babanrigas and female boubous may appear incongruous with smart raiment expected of a serious office environment... but why not limit permissible native attires to "buba" and "sokoto"?

STV is surely afflicted with a milder variety of the "Channels Disease". While it has somehow mellowed down on content...now liberally airing our movies and music....and while its news content and delivery rates somewhere between TVC (the best so far), and Channels Tv, both stations would still not allow their presenters come on air in our native attires. Call this colonial mentality if you like....

Whether owners of tv stations like it or not, the Nigerian music and movie industries have come of age and most Nigerians would rather halt at stations playing music by our talented artistes or movies starring our megastars as we joggle and toggle our remote buttons!

Those are the facts... and the earlier our tv stations hearkened to this counsel, the brighter their chances of survival in tv business.

ADVERTS AND DOCUMENTARIES.
While home-bred documentaries are generally of high standard, the big blot on our adverts is the tendency to introduce dance so inappropriately in places where they just don't fit in! I suppose that is borne out of the Indian influence...their obsession with singing and dancing...and as investors, insisting that such must form part of adverts they sponsor!

But it can be so irritating to see full-grown adults break into rabid dances as soon as they have a whiff of aroma from kitchens or a taste of fruit juice...

...as if they are a couple of imbeciles....
SATELLITE AND CABLE TV.
These terms are not interchangeable...though they are erroneously so used....as satellite technology differs from cable technology. Both are variants of Pay Tv.

The days when reception of satellite tv signals can be received only by giant earth stations is Lanlate and Kujama are over as anyone duly equipped with a dish can now receive such signals.

Many service providers supply coded signals and decoding equipment to subscribers for a fee. Fees are variated according to program bundles called bouquets supplied per unit time.

Nothing much to say about their program contents which tend to have western bents but delivery is generally excellent. Signals tend to fade with the weather.

A band in the wavelength is often reserved for the internet....a fact lost on most pay tv users! The subscription fee you pay already covers this. All you need do is connect your laptop through a cable modem to you decoder using appropriate coaxial and RJ45 cables....then configure your internet protocol address as follows:

127.0.0.1 Port 8080 or click auto detect proxy.
You may need a splitter if your decoder comes with only one output Jack. And you are on to fast internet at speeds thousands of times faster than any GSM provider can ever give you 24/7!

At no extra cost....
Only decoders using broadband technology are so capable. Most fit into this description except Startimes decoder.

Dr Tosin Akindele is a medical practitioner and public affairs analyst.