Impact Of Digitization Of The Broadcasting Media In Nigeria: A Study Of Nigeria Television Authority (NTA Enugu)

Impact Of Digitization Of The Broadcasting Media In Nigeria: A Study Of Nigeria Television Authority (NTA Enugu)

Abstract

The purpose of embarking on this study was to provide a well-detailed account on the impact of digitization of the Broadcasting Media in Nigeria. The study ascertained the level of media digitization in Nigerian Television Authority, Enugu (NTA) in this Era of ICT and internet operations.

The researcher used survey research design to enable her determine the sample size which is 150 through the appropriate statistical method to represent the population of the study. Survey Research Method was employed in the collection of data because it is easier to sought people’s opinion using questionnaire.

Data gathered from the study were analyzed and interpreted using simple percentage and tables. Also summary of findings, conclusion and recommendations were made on the study for future studies.

Table Of Contents

Preliminary Page(s)

• Contents Pages
• Title Page i
• Declaration ii
• Certification iii
• Dedication iv
• Acknowledgement v
• Table of Contents vi
• List of Tables viii
• Abstract x

Chapter One:

Introduction

• 1.1 Background of the Study
• 1.2 Statement of the Problem
• 1.3 Objective of the Study
• 1.4 Research Questions
• 1.5 Scope of the Study
• 1.6 Significance of the Study
• 1.7 Operational Definition of Terms

Chapter Two:

Review Of Literature

• 2.1 Introduction
• 2.2 Review of Concepts
• 2.2.1 The Concept of Digitization
• 2.2.2 The Concept of Broadcasting Media
• 2.3 Review of Related Studies
• 2.4 Theoretical Framework
• 2.5 Summary of Literature Review

Chapter Three:

Research Methodology

• 3.1 Introduction
• 3.2 Research Design
• 3.3 Population of Study
• 3.4 Sampling Technique/Sample Size
• 3.5 Description of Research Instrument
• 3.6 Validity/ Reliability of Data Gathering Instruments
• 3.7 Method of Data Collection
• 3.8 Method of Data Analysis

Chapter Four:

Data Analysis And Presentation

• 4.1 Introduction
• 4.2 Data Presentation and Analysis Demographic Data
• 4.3 Discussion and Findings

Chapter Five:

Summary, Conclusion And Recommendation

• 5.1 Introduction
• 5.2 Summary of Findings
• 5.3 Conclusion
• 5.4 Recommendations
• 5.5 Suggestion for Further Studies
• References
• Appendices

List Of Tables

• Table 4.1.1: Showing Questionnaire Administration
• Table 4.2.1: Sex Distribution of Respondents
• Table 4.2.3: Age Distribution of Respondents
• Table 4.2.4: Showing Educational Qualification of Respondents
• Table 4.2.5: Showing Marital Status of Respondents
• Table 4.2.6: showing Occupational Distribution of Respondents
• Table 4.2.7: Showing Response of those who have DVD Machine
• Table 4.2.8: Showing Response on difference between DVD Machine and VHS Machine
• Table 4.2.9: Response of those who said “Yes” to Question No VIII
• Table 4.2.10: Showing Response on whether DVD gives better audio visual Transmission
• Table 4.2.11: Showing Response on whether Digital Television gives higher Image quality than analogue
• Table 4.2.12: Response rate in differences in sound quality between digital television and analogue Television
• Table 4.2.13: Response rate of those who agree that NTA Enugu broadcasting station have computer equipment.
• Table 4.2.14: Response rate on the use of computer component i.e. flash drive in data gathering and processing
• Table 4.2.15: Response for those who think Computer storage and retrieval system is faster
• Table 4.2.16: Response rate on if Telephone (Mobile Phones) erased or improved information gathering?
• Table 4.2.17: Response Rate on if the Operators of Gadgets are Computer Literate
• Table 4.2.17: Response rate on if recruitment of computer literates and digital technologist promote success in transmission.
• Table 4.2.18: Response Rate on if digitalization integrate the computer and television for improved services 29
• Table 4.2.19: Response Rate on if NTA Enugu Broadcasting Station have OB Van
• Table 4.2.20: Response rate on those who agree that digital OB Van is less painstaking in terms of operation than analogue equipment.
• Table 4.2.21: Response rate on Internet reception in Nigeria.
• Table 4.2.22: Response rate on the audio and visual quality of a Digital Television

Chapter One

Introduction

1.1 Background of the Study

Unlike many other inventions throughout history, the history of the television credits many inventors instead of just one. In this case, there were many inventors working on the idea of watching pictures on the screen.

The earliest proposal was in 1908, in a paper by A.A Campbell-Swinton which postulated the use of Cathode rays. The First Practical demonstrations of television, however, were developed using electromechanical methods to scan, transmit, and reproduce image. As electronic camera and display tubes were perfected, electromechanical television gave way to all-electronic systems in nearly all applications.

The beginnings of mechanical television can be traced back to the discovery of the photoconductivity of the element selenium by Willoughby by Smith in 1873, the invention of a scanning disk by Paul Gottlieb Nipkow in 1884 and John Logie Baird’s demonstration of televised moving Images in 1926. (Wikipedia, 2010).

A 23 year old German University student, Paul Nipkow proposed and patented the first electromechanical television system in 1884. Although he never built a working model of the system, variations of Nipkow’s spinning – disk “image rasterizer” for television became exceedingly common, and remained in use until 1939. Constantin Perskyi coined the word television in a paper read to the International Electricity Congress at the international world fair in Paris on August 25, 1900. Perskyi’s paper reviewed the existing electromechanical technologies, mentioning the work of Nipkow and others.

However, it was not until 1907 that developments in amplification tube technology, by Lee Deforest and Arthur Kom among others, made the design practical. The first demonstration of the instantaneous transmission of still Sillhoutte images was by Georges Rigrioux and as a Fournier in Paris in 1909, using a rotating mirror – drum as the scanner and a matrix of 64 selenium cells as the receiver.

In 1911, Boris Rosing and his student Vladimir Zworykin created a television system that used a mechanical mirror – drum scanner to transmit, in Zworykin’s words, “very crude images” over wires to the “Braun Tube” (Cathode ray tube or “CRT”) in the receiver. Moving images were not possible because, in the scanner, “the sensitivity was not enough and the selenium cell was very laggy”. On March 25, 1925, Scottish Inventor John Logie Baird gave the first public demonstration of televised silhouette images in motion, at Selfridge’s Department store in London.

AT & T’s bell Telephone laboratories transmitted halftone still images of transparencies in May 1925. On June 13 of that year, Charles Frances Jenkins transmitted the silhouette image of a toy windmill in motion, over a distance of five miles from a naval radio station in Maryland to his laboratory in Washington, using a lensed disk scanner with a 48-line resolution.

However, if Television is defined as the live transmission of moving images with continuous tonal variation, Baird first achieved this privately on October 2, 1925. But strictly speaking Baird had not yet achieved moving images on October 2. His scanner worked at only five images, per second, below the threshold required to give the illusion of motion usually defined as at least 12 images per second. By January, he had improved the scan rate to 12.5 images per second.

Television Broadcasting in Nigeria started with the initiative of the first Western Region premier Chief Obafemi Awolowo who on October 31, 1959 launched television broadcasting at Ibadan the head quarters of the region. The Western Region went into partnership with the Overseas Rediffusion Limited. The Western Nigerian Radiovision services limited were created with the responsibility of radio and television broadcasting under one management.
Nigeria as the giant of Africa has to her credit, the first television outfit in Africa, the Western Nigeria Television (WNTV) on NTA Ibadan.

The emergence of what is known today as Nigerian Television Authority (NTA) was borne out of the sheer desire to cater for the crying needs of variegated audience in terms of News gathering, packaging and transmission; this became the second oldest station after (WNTV) resuming transmission on 1st October, 1960. The Degree No 24 of 1977 caused all existing television stations in the country to be taken over by the federal government and then led to a change of name to Nigerian Television Authority (NTA).

However, television broadcasting in Nigeria since inception has been transmitting through analogue television which use complete waves to transmit pictures and sounds. The major drawback of this is that location plays an integral factor, disabling, distorting images and audio on Television in rural areas (Kombol: 2008, P. 13). Over the years, television transmission had grown from strength to strength. It moved from monochrome (black and white) to colour transmission and today we talk of Digitization.

The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) a United Nations Organization body responsible for co-ordinating the use of Telecommunication among nations in its 17th plenipotentiary conference in Turkey, ratified a treaty engendering the digitization of broadcast in every member state before 2015. In consonance with the above Treaty and with the intent to beat this deadline, the national Broadcasting Commission which is Nigeria’s broadcast regulatory body gave an ultimatum to Nigeria broadcast firms to digitalize its operations before 17 June 2012 or stand licence revocation.

Three years ahead of the global deadline, the date was however shifted because it is seen all over that the broadcasting industry was not fully prepared for the digitization to kick off. A new date was then issued by the Nigeria Broadcasting Commission where Mr. Yomi Bolarinwa, Director General, national broadcasting commission announced to the whole world that Nigeria will achieve the digitization of its broadcast stations by June 17 2015.
It is unarguable to state that to be in the leading position in today’s highly technological and competitive media industry the world over, Nigeria must strive to acquire and utilize state of-the-art information and communication technologies in its daily news, programme transmission etc. Anything short of this will spell doom for such media organization. 5

According to Anaeto et al (2008, P. 6) Information Communication Technology has been the converging platform for different word of media communication, information machine and technologies and equipment i.e. Radio, Television, Computers, satellites, Fibre optic Cables, phones, Facsimile machine etc. Consequently, the acquisition, utilization and application of information communication technology in media practice today makes the world activity less cumbersome, faster and error proof.

The foregoing views is in tenderm with realistic scholarly position’ adopted by Maid (1996, P:13), who posits that new information, communication technologies have revolutionized information gathering, processing, storage, retrieval and transmission, making information available even more widely, rapidly and less expensive. They do not only gather, process and disseminate information, they can also arrange, marshall and select information rapidly.
Inspite of the above merits, the truth still remains that acquisition and application of these advanced media, technologies by media outfits in Nigeria especially the government owned stations in their gathering, packaging and transmission equipment is still insufficient.

Indeed, the recent survey carried out in a bid to ascertain the current state of acquisition and utilization of ICT facilities by NTA Enugu Channel 8, which is the study of this project, clearly depicts that the station has not fully embraced this trend in the overall packaging and transmission of News and programmes.

Ibeh (2009), Deputy Director Engineering, NTA seems to agree with the foregoing viewpoint when he stated that although the station has technologies in the 6

packaging and transmission of its news programme, yet such sophisticated communication equipment are still inadequate.

The above viewpoint throws more light to challenges and hindrance of digitization of media broadcast which is a progeny of information communication technology. It also presupposes that inspite of the much – touted technological improvement, there are still gaps in the media world especially in developing countries like Nigeria.

1.2 Statement Of The Problem

The National Broadcasting Commission (NBC) in its annual stations on TV and radio broadcast in Nigeria, observed that most private and public owned broadcast media outfit are yet to make digital transmission part of their daily broadcasting and even those who are into it are partially implementing it. This research intends to look at the impact of the digitization of the Nigeria broadcasting media. The focus is on NTA Enugu.

1.3 Objectives Of The Study

1. To identify problems hindering the digitization of broadcasting in Nigeria.
2. To evaluate the possible way of meeting these challenges.
3. To understand the socio-economic advantages of digitizing in the broadcasting industry. 7

1.4 Research Questions

The research questions involved in this study were as follows:-

1. To what extent is the digitization of TV broadcast going to enhance audio visual transmission?
2. How can Information and Communication Technology equipment facilitate digital broadcasting?
3. Does Digital television have advantages over Analogue broadcasting?

1.5 Scope Of The Study

This study focuses on the challenges and possibilities of digital broadcasting in Nigeria, using NTA Enugu Channel 8 as study area.

1.6 Significance Of The Study

This study is timely because it is on one of the most current and prominent issues. Today, there is intense competition in broadcasting industry all over the world.

Also, the study will be of immense benefit to Nigerians especially media professionals as it focuses on providing possible sensitization on making digitization a reality.

It is expected that this, will shade more light on where and how media outfit will deliver quality services to the satisfaction of the teaming audience.

Finally, students of mass communication will also find the work useful as it touches on their area of specialization.

Chapter Five

Summary, Conclusion And Recommendations

5.1 Introduction

The main objective of this study was to determine the impact of Digitization of the broadcasting media in Nigeria. Using the staff of NTA Enugu Broadcasting station as a focus. The survey research design was used for data collection with questionnaire. Following the analysis of data and discussion of findings, this chapter presents the summary of findings, the conclusion and recommendations.

5.2 Summary of Findings

This research work has shown that digitization has a very high impact on Broadcasting in NTA Broadcasting station. Digital broadcasting transmission is all easy technology breakthrough which records data in singles and makes this transmissions easy. It directly makes editing even much easier especially for editors and line transmitters and transmitter engineers. Digitization will help improve accessibility, sharp picture quality, good and efficient programming and so on.

5.3 Conclusion

With the conduction of the research and having analyzed all the data collected, it was discovered that the global drive for digitization is crucial, because digital format of broadcasting is of higher quality than analogue, it enhances sound and picture quality and makes much channel viewing easily accessible. The introductions of digital television represent the most significant innovation since the advent of television itself. Digital broadcast delivery, in addition to multiplying the number of available channels, will also transform the very nature of the television medium by making it interactive.

This research has revealed that NTA Enugu broadcasting station is not fully digitized, this is because of some constraints which militate against the media house such as lack of adequate funds to run the broadcast station properly.

5.4 Recommendations

One may be right to express fear of NTA Enugu Broadcasting station meeting the NBC deadline of digitalizing by June 2015.

NTA Enugu broadcasting station is faced with myriads of challenges ranging from the use of obsolete equipment, lack of adequate funds, political constraints and government interference, breakdown of operational equipment among others. NTA Enugu whose major problems are lack of adequate funds/ finance according to the findings of the study, should be provided with adequate funds through the Federal annual budget allocation. Government should provide the broadcast station its full monthly subvention in order to fully operate maximally like other mass media organizations, because of the essential services it renders to the general public.

Government should minimize its interference in the station in order to enable the station run smoothly and generate funds to operate maximally. Although it is the case of “he who pays the piper calls the tune”. It is no secrete that the greater percentage of the problems faced by the government owned broadcast outfits is government constant unfair interference, accounting for the reasons private owned broadcast firms in the country thrive to the detriment of the government owned broadcasting organizations.

The prevailing analogues communication and engineering equipment should be replaced with digital communication gadgets such as digital satellite, electronic news gathering equipment (ENG), procurement of Teleprompters, news and programme processing equipment, digital editing studios among others. The researcher believes that the provision of some of these needed facilities will help NTA Enugu performance better.

Finally, the researcher also suggest that the management of NTA Enugu broadcasting station should pay proper management functions such as planning, organizing, coordinating etc to bear-on the overall administration of the broadcast stations, so as to optimally boost it’s productivity.

Until these foregoing remedial measures are met, the myriad of problems facing the NTA Enugu Broadcasting station will still remain, thereby leaving the organization in digital divide.

5.5 Suggestion for Further Studies

Sequel to the findings of this research work, the researcher is suggesting that further research on this topic should be extended to other TV Stations in Nigeria.

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