Minister Appeals To Television Stations To Improve Content

Dr Edward Kofi Omane-Boamah, the Minister of Communication, on Wednesday said content would play a major factor in enticing viewers as the television stations across the world migrate onto the Digital Terrestrial Transmission (DTT) by June 2015. The use of DTT, which would eventually hook all television stations in the country onto one transmission machine and would be managed by the government, has set the deadline of December 2014 for all television stations in the country to be hooked onto the DTT. DTT would enable all stations operating in the country to have a nationwide coverage with clearer pictures and superior sound quality and less interference when compared to analog TV. The system also offers far more channels, thus providing the viewer with a greater variety of programs to choose from. Although, the whole world is expected to be hooked unto the DTT by June 2015, Ghana had set the deadline of December 2014 so that the remaining six months could be used for other residual issues relating to the migration. Dr Omane Boamah, who was speaking during a tour of some television stations to familiarise himself with their preparedness towards the migration unto DTT, urged TV stations to come out with highly competitive content as all the stations would have an even platform to compete for viewers nationwide. He said viewers would now have access to a lot of channels and would only become glued to station(s) which were innovative and had good content(s). The televisions stations he visited on his were E-TV Ghana, Multi TV and Top TV. At E-TV Ghana, he said the decision to hook all stations in the world onto the DTT was taken in 2006 adding that cabinet had given its consent to government�s decision to purchase the transmission machine onto which all the stations would be hooked. He urged stations in the country to stop investing in transmission machines and channel their money into the development of well equipped studios and good contents to remain competitive as the nation migrate unto DTT. Mr Edward Boateng, Chairman, Global Media Alliance who are the owners of E-TV Ghana, expressed concern about the possibility of proliferation of television stations as the cost of establishing a TV station would significantly reduce. He, therefore, called for the protection of existing players as there would definitely be a proliferation of television stations. He said since one would not be required to purchase transmission machine before opening a TV station, people would abuse the system by establishing TV stations with poor content or programmes. Mr Boateng appealed to the Ministry of Communication and the National Media Commission to come out with modalities to curb such abuses. At Multimedia Ghana Limited (MGL) who are the operators of Multi TV, Mr Ato Sarpong, Consultant to MGL, said Multimedia was not concerned about the possibility of television station proliferation as a station with poor content might not survive. He said so far 1.5 million homes in the country had access to the Multi TV digital box while 3.5 million homes in Nigeria were also hooked unto the digital box.