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The Nigerian Television Authority (NTA) could be described as a brand projecting Nigeria’s media landscape to the world. You hear about NTA, watch and enjoy some of their programmes but you might not be aware of the story of NTA, how the station got to the enviable height it is today. In this informative article, Chinelo Ude-Akpe presents a well researched and articulated piece on the history of NTA.
INTRODUCTION
On the 31st October 1959, Nigeria and the whole of Africa received their first television signal, beamed by the Nigerian Television Authority, (NTA) which started as Western Nigeria Television (WNTV) in Ibadan.
The Nigerian Television Authority (NTA) is a Nigeria government owned and partly commercial broadcasting organization that was inaugurated in 1977, and had monopoly of television broadcasting in the country. The NTA runs the biggest television network in Nigeria with stations in every state. Formerly known as Nigerian Television (NTV), the Network began with a takeover of regional television stations in 1976 by the then Nigerian military authorities being viewed as the authentic voice of the Nigerian government.
At inception the first chairman of NTV was Olapade Obisesan, a lawyer trained in the United Kingdom. The first Director-General was Vincent Maduka, an Engineer. Prior to his appointment, Maduka was general manager of Western Nigeria Television, Ibadan, which was Africa’s first television station. The NTA has been criticized with such expression as government propaganda tool. The Guardian in its editorial of Sunday 18 October 2009, stated The Federal government-owned television network, the Nigerian Television Authority, (NTA) is arguably the largest of its type in African, but it is yet to have the operational freedom required to maximize its potentials. However, the NTAs monopoly on the Nigeria airspace was broken in the mid-1990s with the establishment of privately owned television stations and networks .
HISTORY OF NTA
NTA was born on 31st October 1959 under the name Western Nigerian Government Broadcasting Corporation (WNTV) with OlapadeObisesan as its first Chairman. It was based in Ibadan and was the first television station in Tropical Africa.
It became the largest TV Network in Africa as well as one of the oldest and most accomplished indigenous broadcast outfits in Nigeria. Barely a year after, in 1960, the Eastern Nigerian Television (ENTV) came into inception.
NTA came as a parastatal in the Federal Ministry of Information, established by the Nigerian Television Act Cap 24 of 1962, as the National Television Broadcasting Network for Nigeria. It was mandated to provide a public service, in the interest of Nigeria, independent and impartial television broadcasting for general reception within Nigeria. Over time, following amendments and modifications of the enabling Act by Government, the public service (non-profit) activity of the NTA had modifications. This started with the revocation of its exclusive right for television broadcasting in Nigeria and subsequently, the mandate to operate as a non-profit public service entity was partially revoked. It is now a Public Service partly funded by Government, partially commercialized. It operates strictly within the enabling public service guidelines, the Broadcasting Code and Civil Service structure.
Again, the broadcasting mandate of the NTA has been expanded from only broadcasting to Nigeria to broadcasting to the world at large.
VISION STATEMENT
The vision of NTA is, to be a world class television network.
MISSION STATEMENT
To provide excellent television service world-wide and project the true African
perspective.
CORE VALUES OF THE NTA
Professionalism, accuracy, credibility, impartiality, balance and objectivity, social responsibility, activity, national interest, commitment to world peace and development.
OBJECTIVES OF NTA
*To influence, promote, sustain and improve Nigeria’s positive social value through societal, cultural, economic, political and technological programmes.
*To serve as a means of imparting knowledge through educational, informative and entertaining programmes.
*To preserve Nigerian culture and promote cultural and political awareness in the country and beyond
*To provide viewers with the most reliable, authoritative and independent coverage and analysis of contemporary issues of national, regional and international events through news and programmes.
*To enrich national output fostering the spirit of hard work and productivity.
*To promote indigenous technology.
*To ensure the establishment and maintenance of high standard for efficient operation of the broadcasting system.
*To implement all the objectives with an eye on competition in order to ensure competitive advantage and profit.
*To become an integrated part of the information highway.
FUNCTIONS OF NTA
*To erect, maintain and operate transmitting and receiving stations.
*Plan, maintain and co-ordinate the activities of the entire television network.
*Ensure the establishment and maintenance of standards and promote efficient operation of the entire system in accordance with national policy.
*To establish and operate a formula for sharing funds among stations.
*To act as liaison between federal government and the operators.
*To establish such number of stations as it may consider necessary from time to time.
*To specify the types of programmes which should be transmitted by the whole network and the quality, type and content of foreign materials.
*To enter into arrangement with any person or any authority for the purpose of obtaining concessions, licenses, privileges and other rights.
*To manufacture, produce, purchase or otherwise acquire films, gramophone and other mechanical records and material and apparatus for use in connection with the broadcasting services.
*To provide other persons with and receive from them materials to be broadcast.
*To organize, provide and subsidize for the purpose of broadcasting, educational activities and public entertainment.
*To collect in any part of the world and in any manner that may be thought fit, both news and information and subscribe to news agencies.
*To acquire copyrights.
*To publish printed matter that may be conducive to the performance of any of the functions of the Authority.
*To do anything for the purpose of advancing the skill of persons employed in the broadcasting service, or the efficiency of the equipment used in the broadcasting service or the manner in which that equipment is operated, including providing the authority or by others, on its behalf, of facilities for training, education and research; and
*To carry out such other activities as are necessary or expedient for the full discharge of all or any functions conferred on it by law.
CORPORATE STRUCTURE
The decree establishing NTA provides for 1 national board and 6 zonal boards. The national board has the responsibility for policy and standards and remains the corporate legal entity. The Director General is the Chief Executive Officer. He is assisted by a team of Executive Directors who are heads of the various departments: News, Programmes, Engineering, Finance and Admin, Training and Capacity Building and Special duties.
The Director General and the Executive Directors constitute the Board of Management charged with the day to day running of the Establishment. Before them are members of the Board of Directors which is composed of a part-time Chairman and seven Directors. There are zonal directors at the zones who supervise the activities of the general managers who head the stations in the zones. The community stations have officers in charge.
There is a board at the zonal level of this organizational structure. The chairman of each zonal board is a member of the Central Board, that is the zonal managing director. The zonal management has advisers to the Zonal Director who are: Secretary to the Board, Programmes Coordinator, Chief Engineer, Chief Accountant and possibly, Auditor. The zone ensures that content to be broadcast conforms with the stipulated standards. The next tier in administration is the station where the general manager is supreme.
ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE OF NTA
Here is a brief description of roles attached to heads of each department in the station, including some key personnel:
The General Manager
This is the overall boss of any NTA station responsible for overseeing all the departments which includes the administration, programmes, news and current affairs, finance, engineering and marketing departments.
Administration Manager
This is the head of the administration department. The one is in charge of the day to day activities; responsible for the correspondence, promotion, updating of staff records. The M.A also monitors the welfare and well-being of the staff.
This department ensures that there is smooth flow of duties. The administration department, through the leadership of the admin manager can impose discipline and sanctions such as query on eering staff This head of administration department ensures that every staff is carried along in matters of the organization. He coordinates activities of every department to make sure there is good working relationship. The admin department works hand in hand with the finance department to purchase equipment for the station and ensure timely maintenance. This department ratifies staff claims and worries purchasing orders which has to be endorsed by the admin manager who in turn passes it to the general manager for approval. The approved purchasing order is then taken to finance department for funds to be made available. The admin department also works with the engineering department to purchase diesel for the generating plants which are used to power the stations on the event of public power outage. This department is like a unifying point for all the departments.
Programmes Manager
The programmes manager heads the programmes department charged with production and presentation aspects of the station. Programmes department, maintains the library unit where compact discs, tapes, recorded programmes, film promos, advertisements, documentaries (and other audio-visual content), which are to be transmitted are kept, also, for storage after transmission.
The editing unit is also part of the programmes department. This unit is responsible for editing various content, including news and outdoor events or recorded programmes before such goes on air.
Manager, News and Current Affairs
This is the head of the news and current affairs department which is responsible for news gathering and news casting. This department has correspondents who may be attached to permanent beats from where they report news worthy events regularly. This department also monitors foreign stations for news and also source from newspapers. This forms part of the news bulletin aired on the station.
It is the responsibility of the news manager to select the crew such as reporter, cameramen and driver that go to various events such as conferences, meeting, launchings etc to cover the news, public service announcements such as missing person’s announcement, obituary and burial arrangements announcements, are also prepared in this department.
Chief Accountant
This is the head of finance department who takes charge of receiving the proceeds made from sales of the stations air space/air time. The marketing department is responsible for the sales, and in turn, remits proceeds to the finance department which caters for income and expenditure. The auditor is also a key personal of the finance department. He is responsible for auditing the money that goes in and out of the station for proper accountability.
Manager, Engineering Services
The MES heads the engineering department which is in charge of maintenance and use of the station ‘s equipment. This department works closely with programmes and News divisions during transmission so as to ensure that equipment are made available for production and transmission. They also ensure that the mast and transmitters work perfectly.
Manager, Marketing
The MM heads the marketing department which is responsible for selling airtime; for programs which are aired on the station. He also ‘rents’ out physical space within the station’s premises for those who wish to host events. This department goes out to source for sponsorships and advertisements from companies who wish to advertise their products and services, as well as independent producers who wish to air their programmes on the channel.
EXPANSION OF THE NTA
In March 1962 Radio-Television Kaduna / Radio Kaduna Television (RKTV) was established and operated by the Broadcasting Company of Northern Nigeria. RKTV provided coverage for the central northern states until 1977 when it was re-branded NTV-Kaduna-NTA.
In April 1962 The Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation (NBC) was established as a federal government-owned service based in Lagos for broadcast to the South Western States.
Still in 1962, the Nigerian Television Services (NTS), Lagos, was established and in 1972, Midwest TV was established as TV broadcaster at Port Harcourt. This was run by the state government in Benin.
In 1974, Benue-Plateau Television Corporation (BPTV) was established and was situated in Jos. This achieved the feat of the first television station to launch regular/permanent color broadcasts in Africa. The color test transmissions commenced 1st October 1975. BPTV later transformed to NTV- Jos.
According to Charles Umeh (1989), all the stations mentioned above were merged and re-branded Nigerian Television (NTV) and then transformed to NTA. Suffice it to say that following decree 24 of 1978, the Nigeria Television Authority was established with the sole responsibility of television broadcast in Nigeria. It had ten (10) station at the onset but by 1999, it had grown to 30 stations. With the decision of the federal government to expand such service to rural area in 2002, the establishment has grown to over one hundred and one (101) stations which has earned it the status of Africa’s largest television network.
Presently, NTA has presence in the 36 states and Abuja, with 62 community based stations, digital multi-channels as well as subsidiary channels.
NTA STATIONS & NETWORK CENTRES
By 2014, NTA could boast of 101 stations scattered across Nigeria. Currently, there are 10 operational networkcentres which generate and uplink network programmes for the network service. The network centres are: Lagos, Ibadan, Kaduna, Enugu, Sokoto, Benin, Port Harcourt, Makurdi, Jos and Maiduguri. Each Network Centre is headed by Zonal Director who oversees all stations within the zone.
NTA NETWORK PROGRAMMING
Network refers to a group of television stations in different places which are connected and they broadcast same content at same time. NTA strives to live up to its vision, mission and mandate while fostering national unity. It tries to use its services to accelerate development, educate, as well as entertain the people. To live up to the responsibility, program schedules are grouped into:
*News and current affairs
*Youth, family, children
*Sports
*Drama
*Light entrainment
*The Arts
*Formal education
*Religious affairs, philosophy and others
*Government and politics.
Before the merger of state owned/ regional stations into NTA Network, they had TV shows such as Moses Olaiya’s Alawada on WNTV (later became NTA Ibadan), Village Headmaster and Hotel de Jordan on NTA Benin. These were dramas, series and anthology series.
Apart from these few notable ones, there were little original content in dramatic series production during the 1970s. By 1980, when the new NTA network had taken over state owned broadcasting stations in the country, there were concerted efforts to increase the level of local content. At inception in 1977, the network began giving support to the production of notable country-wide network programmes such as Tales by Moonlicht, Cock crow at Dawn, and Mirror in the Sun.
These effects yielded the desired dividend as NTA Sokotos produced drama, ‘Moment of Truth’ won a prize at the fifth festival of the National Radio and Television Organizations of Africa held in Algiers in 1982. To cultivate interest in the broadcast of original content from Nigerian producers, the network set a ceiling of 20% broadcasting time to be allocated to foreign programming at a time when the cost of acquiring those programs was much less than the locally produced ones. Cock Crow at Dawn, an agriculture promotional drama partially sponsored by UBA and produced by Peter Igho who directed the award-winning ‘Moment of Truth’ emerged as one of the first nationally televised drama series in Nigeria.
There was ‘Acada Campus’ , another show produced by Bode Sowande but it was short lived. These productions enjoyed wide viewership because of the monopoly NTA enjoyed at that time.
In the early 1980s, a number of locally produced soap operas were promoted on the network. The first was Laolu Ogunniyi’s ‘Wind against My Soul’, then came ‘For Better or Worse’ and Lola Fani Kayode’s independently produced ‘Mirror in the Sun’.
The mid-1980s saw another group of soap operas that dominated the airwaves. They include ‘Behind the Clouds’, starring Onyeka Onwenu, and ‘Turning Wheels’, ‘Mirror in the Sun’ produced in 1983 was well acted with good cinematography and was well received by critics. But due to weak financial support, the show lasted only two and a half years.
In 1984, by ‘Tales by Moonlight’, a children’s programme that narrates traditional African folklore, made its debut with good audience share.
The NTA network also had a string of notable comedy series at this early period. Some were ‘New Masquerade’ and Ken Saro Wiwa’s ‘Basi and Company’. One of the earliest network comedies was 1984 ‘House no. 13’ starring Wale Ogunyemi. The show was a situational comedy that satirized the social and urban lifestyle of Nigerians. Then followed ‘Basi and Company’ (1985), a critically acclaimed comedy series starring Albert Egbe. Some series spoken in pidgin, like ‘Village Headmaster’, ‘Koko close’ and ‘Samanja’ were transmitted nationwide. In 1986, the network also showed Adelia Onvedibia’s adaptation of Chinua Achebes ‘Things Fall Apart’ in 1986.
With the Structural Adjustment Program of the Babangida administration, NTA had to commercialize some of its time slots in a bid to move away from public broadcasting towards a partially commercial broadcasting network. This led to sponsored and brokered religious programs and live transmission of weddings and funeral services on the network.
NTA had many other network soap operas such as ‘Mind Bending’ by Lola Fani Kayode, ‘Ripples’ by Zeb Ejiro and ‘Checkmate’ by Amaka Igwe. ‘Ripples’ which started in 1988 became the network’s longest running soap before it exited the stage in 1993. ‘Checkmate’ by Amaka Igwe starring Richard Mofe Damijo, Bob- Manuel Udokwu, Ego Boyo, Kunle Bamtefa and Mildred lweka, launched the career of many celebrities. Following the exit of both the successful ‘Ripples’ and ‘Checkmate’, NTA promoted the shows ‘Blossom’ and ‘Fortunes’, but the two could not maintain the viewership of their predecessors. This was owing to the facts that the monopoly NTA enjoyed was being broken by other entrants such as AIT. To sustain its viewership and remain relevant in the face of competition, the network introduced into Prime time, Latin American telenovelas such as ‘The Rich also Cry’, ‘Secrets of the Sand’ and ‘Wild Rose’. For the children belt or instructional programming usually aired at 06.30pm – 07.00 pm, shows included ‘Fun Time’, ‘Readers Club’, ‘Work it Out’, and ‘Take a Step’.
1999 saw the birth of breakfast television with A.M. Express. Core mandate of the NTA is to use News and programmes to advance national unity and development. This agrees with the views of Ojebode (2005) that development communication consists of information plans about government efforts and plans to improve the living conditions of citizens to adopt new ideas and new ways of doing things as it contains news stories of betterment or news of achievement that inspire the citizens. The early or the new NTA network made sure news presenters not only read prepared scripts, but were part of the news gathering team and because many of the pioneer news writers came from print journalism, writers were made to understand the importance of writing for the eyes. At this time, NTA introduced a new line of network newscasters and reporters such as Ronke Ayuba, John Momoh, Cyril Stober, Bimbo Oloyede, Ruth Benemaisia Opia, Sienne Allwell-Brown and Sola Omole. Specialized magazine/feature news programmes such as Frank Olizes ‘Newsline’ was also introduced. The major news programmes at NTA were the Network News at Nine, a five-minute News in Brief at 5.00pm., and a fifteen minutes Newscap at 11.00 pm.
In the 1990s, NTA commercialized some aspects of news reporting including festivals, social events, cultural activities and business activities that are included in the news or as part of a news programme on commercial basis.
Presently, company network programming dominates the airtime of most local NTA stations. The local stations have a choice to pick local broadcasting time from a specific time range.
During the daytime, magazine shows such as ‘A.M. Express’ now rebranded ‘Good Morning Nigeria’ takes the air for two and a half hours, from 06.30 am till 9 am weekdays, but, other programs air once or twice weekly. Network dramas such as ‘Super Story’ and ‘Stand Up Nigeria’ are usually given the Tuesday and Thursday 8.00 pm slot. Notable sports programs include ‘On the Pitch’ on Mondays.
Today, NTA has a contract with Viacom to broadcast Nickelodeons programmes during its 5pm to 7pm time belt for children and instructional television.
NETWORK NEWS
The major news production on NTA is the Network News; an hour long programme that airs at 9:00 pm every Monday-Friday except on Wednesdays which airs a version called News Extra. The Network News usually starts with news from the presidency, then the National Assembly followed by ministries and state governments, then the people, sports.
Other news productions include the News at 7 and Nationwide News at 4 pm. Coverage of events dominates most of the news programs while investigative reporting and human angle stories are usually subordinate to covering government activities with the exception of News line that airs on Sunday evenings. The 9 pm news generates one of the networks largest advertising rates. Paid news segments such as ‘News of Special Interest’ are inserted to network broadcast news such as News line or the 9 pm network news.
SPECTACULAR PROGRAMS AND THEIR IMPACT ON NIGERIANS
TUESDAY NIGHT LIVE
This is a live studio based interactive discussion program that torches on national issues on the front burner for guidance to both government and the governed. Phone lines are provided for the audience to make contributions to the topic of discussion. The program comes on air every Tuesday from 11:00pm to 12:00 midnight.
The program enjoys huge viewership because of the seriousness of issues being discussed. A repeat broadcast comes every Wednesday by 10am.
NEWSLINE
This is a magazine/feature/oddity program that takes the news belt on Sundays. Newsline enjoys tremendous viewership which has made it to generate high revenue from adverts and news of special interest.
GOOD MORNING NIGERIA
Good morning Nigeria is a current affairs program that airs on the NTA Network between 6 and 10am Monday to Friday. It usually features news and information on top stories of the day, in depth analysis of current issues as well as experts views. The programme reviews some national dailies with the emergence of the social media this program is streamed on live and is followed by over 2 million Nigerians on social network.
These programs have been very insightful as there is evidence of their impact on Nigerians.
Taking the Farmer-Herders clashes in Benue State, for instance, Good Morning Nigeria brought the issue to table and featured security experts, farmers, miyyetti Allah representatives and a constitutional lawyer to discuss and profer solutions to the lingering crises. This X-rayed to Nigerians, the nature of the crises and how it can be possibly averted, from different angles.
Also with the lingering fuel crises, Good Morning Nigeria featured the Group Managing Director of NNPC to explain the situation to Nigerians. Often Nigerians send feedback through social media platforms or phone lines, if the program was broadcast live.
NTA AND DIGITIZATION
It is estimated that with digitization, by the 2017, Nigeria would have thirty (30) million households as TV audience.
Digital transition is the technological television evolution from analogue terrestrial television, which broadcasts land based (terrestrial) signals. Digitization is characterized by reduced use of spectrum and more capacity than analogue, higher quality picture, and lower operating costs for broadcast and transmission after the initial upgrade costs. A terrestrial implementation of digital television technology uses aerial broadcasts to a conventional antenna (for aerial) instead of a satellite dish or cable connection. Competing variants of digital terrestrial television technology are used around the world. According to Wikipedia (2010), DTV is transmitted on radio frequencies through the airwaves that are similar standard analogue television, with the primary difference being the use of multiplex transmitters to allow reception of multiple channels on a single frequency range ( such as a UHF or VHF channel).
The digital television transition refers to the shift from analogue broadcasting to digital broadcasting. Many countries of the world have recognized the huge benefit which digital broadcasting offers and are making serious efforts to shift from analogue to digital broadcasting.
The transition from analogue to digital broadcasting involves changing the transmission signals as well as making sure that members of the public buy high definition television sets.
Television broadcasting in Nigeria, since its inception has been transmitting through analogue devices. The migration of television broadcasting from the analogue to digital, will definitely pose some challenges to the people in the industry and the viewers.
Digital broadcasting comes with several options with regards to methods of receiving television signals. Conventional TVs collect data through analogue waveforms to assign radio frequencies ( broadcast) to TV channels in digital broadcast, conversely, digital data is used which offers a number of advantages. Basically, digital facility provides better quality images and auto selects the suitable resolution for the digital TV. This makes for clearer and more detailed images; and enables the TV to function efficiently regardless of its bandwidth capacity. Digital broadcasting also permits the TV set to revive TV signals through various methods, including cable connection, also known as digital cable. Similarly, it allows reception of digital signals with the use of satellite dish. In the views of Alao (2014), Digital facility also allows you to record TV transmissions programs, to view at a time you choose, which means that you may never miss an episode of a TV series that you love.
ASSESSMENT OF NTAs TRANSITION FROM ANALOGUE TO DIGITAL
In October 2013 the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA) then headed by Mallam Musa Mayaki, the Acting Director General, adopted a revolutionary step of inviting the STARTIMES of China for partnership to commence a pilot Digital Television Transmission (DTT). This follows a 2008 discussions with Star Communications Network Technology of Beijing on the possibility of working together to build a pilot DTT platform. To forge ahead with this objective, a three man team was sent to Rwanda to study a similar DTT project which was newly completed by the Star Communications Network Technology .
The team gave a favourable report based on which NTA management ( then under Alhaji Usman Magawata) decided to go into the partnership with the approval of the Federal Ministry of Information. The project had a test run in Lagos and Abuja January 2010, and was commissioned on 29th July, 2010, by President Goodluck Jonathan. The NTA/Star times effectively, commenced transmission in November 2010 and currently, transmits about 60 channels.
In 2011, the Federal Ministry of Information announced the constitution of NTA and Nigerian Broadcasting Commission (NBC) into a committee to work out the cost of digitizing the 109 NTA stations ( a station per Senatorial Zone) network. N15Bn ( Fifteen billion Naira) or $100 million USD was the conservative estimate that was arrived at after series of painstaking research. This excludes the cost of platform provision which NTA/STAR network is doing at an estimated cost of $7million USD per location for 109 stations. The ministerial committee also reportedly recommended that the cost should be spread over a 5- year period (2011/2015) at N3 Billion per annum as Federal Government’s counterpart funding schedule.
CHALLENGES OF DIGITIZATION
Much as the idea and practice of digital broadcasting sound plausible, many developing countries have been using analogue broadcasting for a long time (Kombol 2008). The entire Nigerian Society, including the NTA are torched by these teething problems:
Lack of trained Personnel
The digital television transitions is faced with paucity of professionals as the existing manpower is trained to only handle analogue broadcast equipment. This problem calls for services of professional trainers to train the staff of NTA on the digital technicalities.
Consumers demand for Digital Television
It is unclear/uncertain the extent to which consumers will embrace issues about digitization ranging from acquisition of digital television sets, to embracing digital content.
Long range Problem
Turning to distant television station, in the views of Kombol ( 2008) will be more difficult. Digital television signals drop out completely below a certain level, where as analogue television signals degrade gradually, and sometimes gaining pictures at greatest distance from the transmitters. Also with current way of picking digital signals, using antenna viewers are limited to whatever channels the antenna picks up and the signal quality will also vary.
Ignorance
Digitization comes with new knowledge which the people need to be educated on. This brings up the need for awareness creation, to the fore. Also government demonstrates apathy to issues as this.
NTA IN THE FACE OF SOCIAL MEDIA
The new media such as internet, mobile smart phones, among others, make for two way communication which is basic aim of good media relations. NTA makes use of chart rooms for virtual discussions where viewers or listeners can have opportunities to make contributions to ongoing programme. This encourages immediate feed back and interaction.
Both News and programmes departments use social media platforms to generate, seek and share content selectively, and to interact with other individuals on the platform that may not be permissible with traditional means of broadcasting. NTA encourages people and offers to link them with the internet. As programmes are also streamed on line the audience share increases even as this gives boost to the stations credibility. Presently, NTA has an App for Android and iphone devices. These enable the audience to get connected and possibly make reference to already broadcast materials. NTA has a website which boosts the image of the station and affords it international recognition. Rodney (2005) maintains that the new media make the media relation process easier and cheaper to a large extent; the e-mail, e-bulletin can transmit message back to the source in a matter of seconds. NTA carries out quick and cost effective broadcasting as typified in online journalism, “Eye Witness News”. Because NTA has adopted many functions of the social media added to their traditional media; it boosts the credibility of some aspects of the social media and upholds NTA as trendy/current. NTA trains her staff in the relevant areas of broadcasting including the recent 4 weeks training in online journalism and other trainings for different cadres in other departments. In the face of digitization, NTA has made its staff, to understand that with the new media and technological advancement, there is need for all to move with the trend by updating their knowledge and skills.
REFERENCES
Kombol, A.M. (2018). Digital Considerations in Television Production. Makurdi: Asahod.
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