The Broadcasting Organization of Nigeria (BON) has named low energy supply, the national grid’s ongoing breakdown, as well as the high cost of diesel and Premium Motor Spirit (PMS) procurement as problems inhibiting broadcast stations’ performance in the nation.
Additionally, according to BON, sponsors’ shrinking advertising budgets and the failure to pay off existing debt are impeding the country’s broadcasting stations from operating at their peak efficiency.
Dr. Yemisi Bamgbose, executive secretary of the BON, commented on the sector’s performance in a statement released in Abeokuta, the capital of Ogun State, saying that owners of stations owned by the federal and state governments should put mechanisms in place to ensure proper funding of their stations so that democracy can flourish.
“Federal government should deploy necessary funds to the National Broadcasting Commission to enable it to implement digitisation programmes that will benefit stakeholders in particular and the general public in general.”
“It was a year that the National Electricity grid collapsed many times, magnifying the epileptic public power supply problem while bills for the non-available power supply kept and keeps rising unabated,” Bamgbose complained.
He disapproved of the “imposition of double taxation,” which he claimed made the industry’s problems worse. Bamgbose asked for alliances and mergers in order to share in the profits from advertising after expressing concern about the oversaturation of the airwaves by commercial radio and television stations.
The ES has pledged that Broadcast management will carry out their constitutional duties without fear or favor, even as he suggests a variety of solutions to the predicament.
