Ghana Broadcasting Corporation: The Need For Its Affiliate Television Stations Privatized
The Ghana Broadcasting Corporation (GBC) is the public broadcaster in Ghana . It is funded by broadcasting television and radio commercials . Broadcasting began in Ghana on July 31, 1935 from a wired relay station opened in Accra. The brain behind the introduction of broadcasting into the country was the then Governor of the Gold Coast, Sir Arnold Hudson, affectionately, known as the "Sunshine Governor". One of the main reasons for introducing the Relay Service is to bring News, Entertainment and Music into the homes of all and sundry. This will bring to an end, the barriers of isolation and ignorance in the path of progress and also to enable the people of Gold Coast to improve on their very rich cultural music (Source: Wikipedia).
Today, GBC can boost of a major nationwide television and radio stations in all the ten regions in the country. GBC operates one television station, GTV , which is broadcast to the whole of Ghana via satellite . Additionally, GBC operates radio stations in the 10 regions namely Uniiq FM, Radio1 , Radio2 , Uniq FM , Volta Star , Twin City Radio , Radio Central , Radio Savannah , Garden City Radio , URA Radio , Radio Upper West , Sunrise FM , Obonu FM and Radio BAR .
The State media GBC runs six affiliate TV stations including GTV, GTV sports plus, GTV Govern, GTV life and Obonu TV which are greatly government financed. These are stations whose returns towards State revenue has being quite abysmal over the years. The purpose for its establishment was to broadcast by informing the good citizens of this country of matters of national concern. GBC has on several occasions failed in providing necessary information or telecasting events of relevant importance including the nation’s premier league.
This paper is not driven by sentiments but to bring to light what we haven’t paid attention to for a very long time: The need to privatize most of the affiliate television stations under GBC with the State having the majority shares.
PRIVATIZATION WITH STATE HOLDING MAJORITY SHARES
The government can privatize the affiliate television stations leaving the main GTV station to serve as a nationwide television. We believe this will transform and ensure the following;
- Enable the government acquire revenue to undertake specific projects
- Cut down nuisance cost incurred by the government in managing these stations.
- To encourage competitions, efficiency and effectiveness
- Enhance good management and protection of State property
- Ensure quality in pictures, sounds, directing etc
- Do away with the tendency of been politically partisan
To affect this, Government needs to undertake stringent measures to ensure Public Private Partnership (PPP). Among the several reasons to privatize a state corporation would be overstaffed employees; this is a greater cost as most government employees at the time of Ghana Telecom were paid for doing no job yet the government needed to maintain facilities which was a greater burden. In most of the cases, there was no urgency in the provision of services including installation of telephones by citizens and non-citizens who phoned in at Ghana Telecom customer care to book for such request. State facilities including internet were misused by employees as there was no monitoring mechanism to combat such loss.
GBC as it stands now, in our own opinion has failed and deviated from its purpose of establishment in providing informative and entertainment services. We won’t be far from the truth if we reiterate that most of these affiliate stations by far are very boring to watch.
In conclusion, we strongly recommend the government to take such a giant step in privatizing a state institution like that of GBC in the manner stated above. This would leverage the nation from financial stress as this move would help eradicate some cost and privatization would allow the institution to flourish in the hands of new management than its current state.