Government is losing patience with management of GBC. Unfortunately there is little government can do in terms of changing the faces at GBC.
Many Ghanaians are angered by the fact that the national broadcaster – cannot offer audiences professional broadcasting.
I watched with utter disappointment from my flat in Glasgow the poor feed CNN got from GBC during Obama’s address to the Ghanaian parliament. It is very surprising that no one lost their job over the embarrassing telecast of the events. The corporation failed Ghana and embarrassed the nation by the very poor quality live stream of the event.
The Ghana Broadcasting Corporation, once the place for quality and profession broadcasting has now become an institution of public fun and its competitors look on with glee as GBC keeps losing its grace and lustre.
After the Obama debacle and the many before it, one might have thought that the corporation would grow and get it right but it is rapidly deteriorating in terms of broadcast quality.
Two things struck me when I returned to Ghana from the UK. First it was GBC’s coverage of the NPP’s recent special national conference. The duty editors at GBC in a very hypocritical fashion treated the story as less important.
News is news, but for GBC to grudgingly broadcast the biggest news story of that day in a manner they did apparently because it was about an opposition party made me so sick I would have punished the duty editors if I were the Head of News.
The second thing is the corporation’s unique selling proposition – “Still the only Station with nationwide coverage.” When low budget stations like TV Africa and TV3 are rapidly reaching many viewers across the nation, GTV is still fantasising about “still being the only station with nationwide coverage.” It is the weakest sales pitch I have ever heard.
How could anyone worth their pay cheque replace the previous selling pitch – “the station of the nation” with this rather drab new sales pitch?
I hate to say this about a corporation I spent over a decade of my work life at, but the state of our national broadcaster is pathetic.
Why should the public continue to fund GBC in its current state? National radio and television have become so boring you wonder why we have to keep it running. GTV for instance want to have something for everyone on a 24hour channel. You would certainly appear boring.
The corporation is not only boring but it is running at a loss and everyone but the management and the National Media Commission (Which has supervisory authority over GBC) seem to be oblivious to the competition from private media.
The corporation is largely run by supine managers and many guest presenters with childlike personality. The station that once paraded an indomitable list of broadcast giants like Godwin Avenorgbo, Cyril Acolatse, Charlie Sam, James Amartey, Poncho, Lucy Banini, Fritz Baffour and Anthony Kumah has become a pale shadow of itself.
Gone are the days when people from all walks of life would hasten to their radio or television set just to be informed, educated, entertained and mesmerised by their favourite television and radio hosts.
Every adult Ghanaian has a stake in GBC and we must treat it as a national treasure. It is a tax-payer financed institution and imperative on all Ghanaians to insist on nothing short of top class broadcasting.
GBC was a pacesetter, let us revive that significance. Fortunately there are many people including myself who understand GBC’s problems; I’ve been there for over a decade and know the reasons for the lamentable lowered standard of broadcast at GBC.
There is no silver bullet solution to GBC’s woes but if the National Media Commission appointed me to run the corporation, I can make GBC beat Joy FM in advertising revenue and wean back lost audiences within six months. I can turn it around and make it not just a leader in the business, but uphold the public service role it is required to play.
And before someone starts laughing or claim I am too young for the job need I remind them that the world laughed at Neil Armstrong when he said he could walk on the moon, and Winston Churchill was 33 years when he was made a cabinet minister and became one of the 20 men who determined the destiny of the most powerful nation then. That was 1908 and a lot has changed since; so much that we now have the youngest President of the USA and a mayor of Pittsburgh who is in his late twenties (Luke
The breakfast show on Joy FM currently makes about seven million new Ghana cedis (7 Billion old Ghana Cedis) a month - That is just one programme. And how much does our dear state broadcaster – Radio and Television combined make over the same period? How much does Uniiq FM make in three months and why? How much does GTV’s morning show fetch over the same period 06:00 – 10:00am?
I do not believe in the threadbare argument that GBC is a public broadcaster and cannot be run like a private radio and television stations. That argument is espoused by “special interest groups” and people who simply do not have ideas.
The lethargic performance by experienced GBC staff can be solved easily; the seemingly insurmountable poor programming can be made exciting and government won’t have to worry about a failure to broadcast crucial national events.
The reality is that, you cannot expect GBC to compete with Multimedia. When some Joy FM presenters earn about two thousand new Ghana cedis (or 20million old cedis) and the state still pays people who have worked for many years about two hundred new Ghana cedis.
Broadcasting is like education. It is expensive and until we seriously address the problem of living wages for national broadcasters, we cannot retain young or old talents and we would continue to get what we currently get.
One can understand why the British Broadcasting Corporation, BBC would give a three-year £18m contract to Jonathan Ross (a presenter), or paid Russell Brand £200,000 a year for his weekly radio show.
As a colleague journalist from the USA once told me - “GBC in its present state is simply a bum.’’
Credit: Mohammed Mubarak (Ras Mubarak)
mmubarak79@yahoo.com
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