GBC At 84, Challenges, Achievements And Prospects

The Ghana Broadcasting Corporation, GBC, the nation’s state broadcaster, is 84 years old and as per its tradition a lecture has been organised to commemorate the milestone. It was a real diagnosis of the institution, by way of its relevance, prospects, leadership, and challenges.

A renowned Communications professional, one-time Director General and Board Chairman of the GBC, Professor Kwame Karikari made fascinating revelations and recommendations as to the way forward for the state broadcaster. The topic under discussion “The State of the State Broadcaster” was key because this is the exact time for the GBC to tread in a well-defined route of effective public broadcasting to the nation as per its primary objective.

GBC had over the years enjoyed absolute monopoly on the airwaves until the early 1990s when it was faced with severe competition. Competition we say is very good. It provides avenues for quality and excellent production and provision of highly qualitative content for the audience.

The competition GBC faced meant that its audience then had the option to choose either to continue to listen and view its programs or choose other stations. This was critical to GBC because it needed to provide reassurance and win the largest audience share but woefully this was not the case.

84 years on, it is still struggling to keep its head above the waters. This is against the backdrop of huge experienced and professional human capital, gargantuan infrastructure around the country and governmental support the state broadcaster enjoys. There has rather been a substantial audience penetration by the private stations into the Ghanaian broadcasting arena.

For some reason, these stations, according to available statistics have larger audience share and providing broadcasting services, even though not too professional, to the cross section of the Ghanaian listening and viewing population. So what went wrong?

Professor Karikari, attributed these shortfalls of the state broadcaster to a few challenges, prominent among them are; governmental interferences, leadership, logistics and funding. For him, these have been the bane of GBC, even though successive governments have over the years promised to help the institution to grow to become one of the world’s best broadcasting institutions.

The former head of the GBC, lamented over government interference, which brings to mind, the issue of media ownership and control which in most cases provides avenues for dictatorship and editorial manipulation. When this happens, GBC would be compelled to dance to the tune of the government which apparently would lead to the lose of audience.

In the broadcasting industry all is about how wide you transmit, how large is your audience, how relevant your content is to your audience and what impart you exert on society. Governmental interference has also contributed to poor leadership over the years.

As many as 14 Director Generals have led the Corporation and about seven of these were at post for as little as two years. The question is how effective can a Director General be if he or she has been given just two years to operate considering such a huge institution like the GBC.

GBC is also seen to be lagging behind in the technological age of broadcasting. Equipment appears so obsolete and difficult to use. By and large, staff of GBC have done very well by working under such difficult conditions. Ethics, professionalism and courtesy have always been their hallmark.

With the ingenuity, the role of the state broadcaster has been played very well in the areas of influencing public opinion, determining the political agenda, providing a link between the government and the people, promotion of national cohesion and development.

GBC must utilise its huge rich human capital to find means of raising enough income to support its activities. For instance, the renowned GBC Training School could be upgraded to enroll broadcasters to be trained for fees on a larger scale as done by other international Broadcasting Organisations. This arguably would be a good regular income for the Corporation and also help defray most of its accumulated high debts.

The state must retool the Corporation to adequately perform its functions. Kudos, staff of GBC. The state of the State Broadcaster is not too good a story to tell but workers have paid their dues. Posterity will forever remember workers for at least helping to keep this national asset running.

BY NANA SIFA TWUM A COMMUNICATIONS CONSULTANT