A COMPARATIVE STUDY ON THE PERFORMANCE OF GOVERNMENT OWNED AND PRIVATE OWNED BROADCASTING MEDIA ORGANIZATIONS (SPLASH FM AND BCOS)

CHAPTER ONE

1. 1. BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

The role of the broadcasters and the broadcast media as agents of rural and national development, especially at the information dissemination level is now generally recognized and accepted by experts and policy makers. What seems quite unresolved in many developing countries is how best to utilize the potentials of the broadcasters and their media to achieve developmental objectives (Nwosu, 1990:119). In Nigeria, there are three main types of media ownership namely; government ownership, private ownership and partnership. In the case of government ownership, the government establishes controls and finances the media outfit, private ownership is when an individual or a group of persons establish, control and finance the media outfit in partnership both the government and private individuals are into some sort of co-ownership regarding the establishment, financing and controlling of the media house.

There is a symbiotic relationship between the media and the society. It is in the interest of the society to have strong and robust mass media as it is in the best interest of the media to uphold the values and protect the interest of the society from which they derive their impulse, support and patronage. No media institution can survive if it is perceived to be working against its own society (Onukaba 2005:3).

It is the duty of any media institution to keep the public aware of what is going on around them by providing accurate, factual and timely information at all times. It is also the duty of the media to warn and alert the public about impending dangers to interpret events or provide information needed by the public to make every day decision that will make them participate actively in the political, economic and social activities of a community and to assist the public in determining current trends.

Media institutions are also expected to use their products to educate, entertain, modify public opinions, reinforce attitudes and set agenda for the society. In many societies, people depend on the media to know where to find jobs, where to shop, where to eat, seat out, who to note for etc it is therefore, safe to say that the influence of the media extends to every aspect of human life and society.

But for media institutions to be able to play these roles effectively, they are expected to uphold the values of objectivity, fairness, justice, accuracy, balance, moderation and decency. The reason governments have often given for their involvement in the media is that the private ones cannot be trusted to faithfully uphold these values of the profession. They accuse them of fostering unrealistic expectations among the populace, heightening anxieties about conditions in the country, mongering etc. of course, these are general criticisms against all media institutions, whether private or public. State media institutions are set up ostensibly to address these weaknesses of the private media as well as to bring government programmes and policies closer to the people and promote peaceful co- existence among the different groups in the society in which they operate. But they are usually limited by their methods of operation (Onukaba, 2005).

The “battle cone” seems to be drawn between those who argue unflinchingly that the best way to use the broadcast as a facilitator of development in the third world is to have them owned and controlled by the government and those that believe that the best result will be achieved by making the electronic media dominantly a private sector affair. It is on this fact that the researcher’s topic finds it footing, hence “the comparative study of the performance of government owned and privately owned broadcasting media organization”.

Somewhere between the two extreme rolls are those who belong to what seems to be more pragmatic position that government ownership and control of the media should co –exist with private media ownership and that commercial broadcasting should exist with private media to facilitate the job of broadcasters in the area of socio- economic development of their nations.

The origin of the current government ownership and control of the broadcast media in Nigeria can be traced to the history, purpose and nature of colonial broadcasting services. It was mainly used for catering for the information and entertainment needs of the predominantly colonial political and educated elites in colonial Nigeria as well as the needs of the very few Nigerians educated elites (Nwosu 1990: 120-121)

1.2       STATEMENT OF THE RESEARCH PROBLEM

Ownership of the media house, its control and recruitment of its principal staff have formed the influential factors consequent upon the programme quality of the media house since the owner(s) of the media house usually determine the aforementioned factor.  The media ownership have in some ways influenced the media programmes and this has posed problems to journalism as a trade.
In this case, the broadcast media have to function in tune with the whims and caprices of the owner(s).  Nothing runs the broadcast media practitioner down as having the option of either following the dictates of the owners or face the bitter music of being sacked.  Ownership influence on programme content have made many broadcast media outfit to collapse in operations and have also made them to lose their audience grip.  This is mostly true of government owned broadcast media.
After the liberation of media industry by General Ibrahim Babangida’s administration in 1992, many privately – owned broadcast media started springing out from all corners, one of which is BCOS radio Station.
These new privately owned media stations produced standard programmes that out bids that of the government – owned media stations and as a result, many people tend to abandoned government owned broadcasting media.  The problem now is; why and to what extent has the majority of the citizenry abandoned government owned media?

1.3       OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY

The main objectives of the study include:

To establish whether the government owned media are free to operate in a democratic government like the privately owned media.

To check the rationale for the preference, the audience have for one medium over another.

To find out which of the media establishment is more development oriented.

To ascertain the level of ownership influence on both media outfits in terms of staffing and programming.

To establish the audience perception on both media outfits.

To compare the government owned media with privately owned media.

To provide veritable data for further study in this area of review.

1.4       SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY

The findings of this study will help other researchers in carrying out a similar study.  It will add to the mass communication literature and bulk of knowledge on media performance in Nigeria.  The study will help to analyze the pattern of media ownership and its influence on Nigerian development.  Finally, it will provide the premise for individuals and stakeholders to make decisions on which form of media ownership is better for Nigeria.

1.5       RESEARCH QUESTIONS

Does the emergence of private broadcasting media in Nigeria improve broadcasting generally?

To what extent is the entrance of private broadcasting a challenge to government owned broadcast media in Nigeria?

Does source credibility affect broadcast media listenership?

To what extent do the Enugu radio listenership prefer private radio programmes to government radio programmes?

To what extent does the radio listenership use what they hear from radio?

1.6. RESEARCH HYPOTHESIS

H0: There is no significant difference on the performance of government and private owned broadcasting media organizations.

H1: There is a significant difference on the performance of government and private owned broadcasting media organizations.