I’m happy to address you today and
to express my appreciation on your decision to come to the National
Broadcasting Commission (NBC), in order to be more enlightened on its
activities.
You requested for training from the
Commission on, “the pros and cons of broadcasting in Nigeria”, but I have
taken the liberty to change the topic to, rather, call it briefing or
enlightenment on a very important subject that is trending in the broadcast
industry, not only in Nigeria, but in the whole world. If you call it a revolution
in broadcasting you would not be too far off the mark. This revolution is
called: DIGITIZATION.
This brings us to a very important
question: What is digitization?
According to Wikipedia, “The term digitization is often used when
diverse forms of information, such as text, sound, image or voice, are
converted into a single binary
code. Digital information exists as one of two digits, either 0
or 1. These are known as bits (a contraction of binary digits) and the sequences
of 0s and 1s that constitute information are called bytes.”
Tanis, 2008, in an article,
explained digitization thus; “In the late 20th century,
the techniques used in creating effects entered a new era, that of
digitization. In digitization, sounds and images are stored as electronic files
and viewed and edited on a computer. Creating a digital version of a filmed
image takes a huge amount of data-storage capacity. To approximate the look of
the 35-millimeter film, the computer must break each frame into millions of pixels
(picture elements). The computer assigns a number value to each pixel that
corresponds to a color and brightness level, by renumbering the pixels so that
the colors change, the image can be altered.”
The International Telecommunications
Union (ITU), which establishes international regulation for radio, telegraph,
telephone and space radio-communication as well as allocates radio frequencies,
has set a deadline for the full transition to digital broadcast for UHF by 2015
and VHF 2020. Nigeria is a signatory to
this agreement. Consequently, the
National Broadcasting Commission (NBC), in consultation with the broadcast
industry, initially set a deadline for Nigeria at June 17th, 2012.
This deadline was not feasible and it has now been shifted to January 1, 2015 –
six months ahead of ITU’s deadline, which is June 17, 2015.
Let me not bore you with
technicalities and terminologies which may end up confusing you more. To put it
simply and in a layman’s language, digitization means that our televisions will
provide us with better quality pictures and sounds than we have at the moment.
Loko, Maxwell, puts it thus, “Digital Television
offers viewers more programme choice, portable and mobile television reception
as well as enhances picture and sound quality.” But the major benefit of digitization is that
the spectrum will be opened up and the analogue frequencies would be freed and
used by government for security and other developmental activities. According
to Amana, “The reason for the transition
from analogue to digital broadcasting is for a more effective use of the
available spectrum.” In other words, the digital frequencies will more than
double which would, in turn, challenge broadcast stations to produce more
programmes for the benefit of viewers and listeners. “One of the greatest challenges broadcasters will face is the issue of
content generation”, says Loko. Whether
the broadcast stations are equal to the task is another issue altogether.
As the only government institution
authorized to regulate broadcasting in the country, the National Broadcasting
Commission (NBC), whose function it is to advise the Federal Government of
Nigeria on all broadcasting issues, played and is still playing a prominent
role in the transition from analogue to digital broadcasting, otherwise known
as digitization - If you like, the Commission is driving the transition train
on behalf of the Federal Government of Nigeria.
From the onset, NBC pointed out a
number of issues that are likely going to affect the people of Nigeria and
advised government on how to sort these things out. For instance, once Nigeria
switches over to the digital platform, no television will be able to receive
and transmit signals, except digital televisions. At the moment, the television
sets we have in our houses are analogue and we cannot use them to receive
digital signals. That means we have to buy new digital televisions as our
current TV sets will be useless! That is a huge expenditure! Imagine how many
people have TV sets in Nigeria! Some more than one set! And digital TVs are
probably relatively more expensive than analogue TVs.
There is another option, though: If
you want to retain your current analogue TV set and receive digital signal,
then you have to buy a decoder called set-top box (STB). And you have to
subscribe to a pay (cable) TV, through which, with the aid of the STB, you can
receive digital signals. An example of this is StarTimes or DSTV, which are
digital (Pay) TVs. All these will, however, involve a huge expenditure to
people. NBC is, therefore, considering the option whether government should
subsidize the cost of the STBs as is done in other developed countries like
America. But it will also be a good idea for the federal government to
encourage the local production of the STBs so that people can buy them at a
cheaper rate.
But then, what about broadcast
stations? They too have to incur huge expenditures to replace their current
analogue equipment such as transmitters and studio equipment. Have you ever
considered what will happen to the current transmitters in the country? Where
are the stations going to dump them? How many TV stations do we have in
Nigeria? May be more than a hundred? What is going to happen to them if they
are replaced? All these are some of the challenges NBC is pondering about.
As part of the digitization process,
the federal government, on advice by NBC, has approved that there should be signal
carriers, independent of broadcast stations, which should be responsible for
broadcasting content which the stations will generate. These outfits, which
will be private firms, should be licensed by NBC. If this comes about,
broadcast stations will no longer bother about purchasing transmitters as this
will be done by the signal carriers. Instead, they will concentrate their
resources in providing the much needed content that will fill the numerous
channels that will be created by digitization. Nigerian government has already
approved that the Nigeria Television Authority, NTA, should be split into two
and one of the two organizations will be a signal carrier with a completely
different name.
Also, on advice by NBC, the federal
government of Nigeria in December 2012, inaugurated a committee tagged, DIGITEAM NIGERIA, which will spearhead
the transition from analogue to digital broadcasting. Some of the terms of
reference of the committee, as published in the NBC website, include:
· Establishing and implementing a comprehensive public
awareness programme in consultation with stakeholders and the regulator (NBC);
· Follow-up on all processes towards the enactment of all
enabling laws and necessary amendments to existing legislations;
· Developing the specifications of the set-top box (STB),
taking into consideration the need or otherwise for establishing a minimum
specification for an STB;
· Carrying out all relevant activities related to the success
of the transition programme amongst other very important mandates.
The committee will now be working to
beat a new deadline of January 1, 2015, when Nigeria will switchover from
analogue to digital terrestrial television broadcasting.
As a matter of fact, the
digitization process has started as NBC has decided that the switch over from
analogue to digital broadcasting will
start in Jos, Plateau State, in April,
2013! “This choice of Jos is primarily
because Jos has a history in entertainment of being the place colour television
started”, according to the Director General of the National Broadcasting
Commission, NBC, Mr. Emeka Mba, when he visited Jos to inform the state
governor of this development.
Thank you.
REFERENCES:
1. Tanis, Nicholas. "Motion
Picture." Microsoft® Encarta® 2009 [DVD]. Redmond, WA: Microsoft
Corporation, 2008.
4. Loko, Maxwell, “Universal Access to Digital Broadcast –
Opportunity for Terrestrial Broadcasters”, Broadcast Regulator, National
Broadcasting Commission, Vol. 1, No.2, January-March, 2013.
5. Amana, Eddy, Interview, Broadcast Regulator,
National Broadcasting Commission, Vol. 1, No.2, January-March, 2013.
6. Mba, Emeka, Media, “Analogue-digital switchover: Plateau
Radio/TV scores another highpoint”, Sunday Trust, Vol. 8, No. 36, Sunday,
February23, 2014.