Date: 2016-08-03

A former Director General of the National Broadcasting Commission,NBC, Yomi Bolarinwa, has called on broadcasting stations to produce compelling programmes to enable them compete in the digitization era.

Bolarinwa made the call on Tuesday, while delivering a lecture " Digital Switchover, Implications for NTA," at a symposium organized by the Nigeria Television Authority, Ilorin, as part of activities marking the fortieth anniversary of the station. The former NBC boss, noted that the content of any broadcast station remains the selling point in the digital era.

He said digitization had provided room for viable competition in terrestrial, satellite, cable, web and mobile platforms, adding that the era of monopolies had gone. Delivering the second lecture, a former General Manager of the Kwara State Broadcasting Corporation, Dr Abdulrareem Omoloso, said the country's broadcast industry needed better technology.

He also emphasized the need for broadcast outfits to package programmes that would promote the country's cultural heritage and reflect them to the outside world.

Dr Omoloso, who was also a former News Editor with the Herald Newspaper and now a lecturer at the Alhikmah University, said government-owned broadcast media were seriously challenged by digitization, particularly in the area of equipment to operate with, while the private broadcast media outfits were better off in this regard. He identified economic, education, and security challenges as problems facing broadcast media outfits today in Nigeria.

Omoloso said working conditions in state-owned broadcast media outfits needed to be improved. Earlier, the General Manager of the NTA,Ilorin, Mr Adetunji Majeed, who narrated the station's journey, assured them that the recommendations from the symposium would help toward repositioning the station.