Your TV will shut down ... in less than 4 years

Your television set, that often entertaining but sometimes boring box which keeps you company and provides you with touch-button pleasure, news and sport, will shut down in less than four years.

Yes, in the next four short years, whether your set is old or new, whether it is flat screen or tube, whether it is Sanyo or Samsung or any other brand, your television set will simply shut off. At best, if your TV stays on, your reception may receive so much interference that you may shut it off yourself.

That is what officials at the Ministry of Communication are not telling us. Yet on June 17, 2015, all analogue television sets which are estimated to account for 95 per cent of all TV sets in Ghana, will cease to carry television signals from GTV, TV3, Metro TV, TV Africa, Net 2, Crystal TV …… the lot. Not even the almighty DSTV will stay on.

Imagine June 2015. You switch on your TV, no Agya Koo Gbengbentus, no Breakfast Show, no Miss Malaika, no News 360, no MTN Soccer Academy, no Ghana’s Most by Beautiful.  Indeed no one in Ghana can watch anything on TV unless he owned a digital TV set with DVBT specification or has a set-top box connected to his old TV set.

Min of Communication

The Ministry of Communication has not volunteered any information on the migration from analogue to digital broadcasting. A visit there last week to seek information yielded only a promise from the PRO to send me the required information by e-mail and that was the end of the matter.   

Obviously, if the digital migration was left to the Ministry alone, the migration may never materialise judging by the “crawl” with which the ministry goes about providing simple information about a process that the government is centrally involved.

Digital Broadcasting Migration is a process in which the analogue broadcast transmission system we are currently operating in Ghana will be replaced by a new type of digital broadcast system which offers better picture and sound quality and more importantly, provides a bigger spectrum for the transmission of more television programmes.

We have no choice, Ghana is only one of all African countries who must comply and prepare towards the June 2015 deadline set by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) for the migration to digital broadcasting. It appears, however, that given Africa’s unfortunate reputation of not addressing important issues until “five minutes to midnight”, many countries may be late.

Indeed, research done by media watchers on the continent suggest that over half of Africa’s 53 countries are unlikely to meet the deadline. As at August last year, 29 countries had not even started the policy and implementation process.

According to a new report by Balancing Act researchers, only five African countries have launched their digital transmission and have put together a policy document and another handful have set up committees or task forces to oversee implementation.

The reason for concerns raise in the research report about the probability of many African countries missing the ITU deadline is that the policy process that comes before implementation can take two to three years, leaving only a relatively small amount of time to carry through the implementation.

In Ghana, one of the seemingly few officials who are passionate about the migration to digital broadcasting and who is optimistic that Ghana will meet the deadline is Oscar Nchor, the Director of Technical Production at the state broadcaster, GBC. “We will make it”, he told me when I ambushed him at his office last Thursday.

Nchor had just returned from one meeting and was preparing for another but once he launched into digital migration issues, there seemed to be no way of stopping him.  As a member of the newly instituted National Digital Migration Broadcasting Technical Committee, Nchor was positive that all will be by well by June 17, 2015.

He said that the setting up of the technical committee is a demonstration that government has accepted responsibility for carrying out the digital migration process and was optimistic that government will provide the necessary support structures to make the implementation as smooth as possible.

Nchor conceded, however, that there is a lot of work to be done. For example, he raised one issue over which specific operating system out of a wide range that Ghana would opt for. He mentioned that when some European countries began their digital migration as far back as 1996, they chose MPEG 2, then moved to MPEG 4, and later to DVB and now many of them are considering migration to an even better system – DVB – T2 and he thought that Ghana should straightaway adopt the latest system just as Kenya and South Africa have done.

That opinion is shared by Collins Khumalo – President MultiChoice Africa. “In my view, there is no real room for debate. “Choosing less than the best would be like saying that we’d be happy to choose old cell phone or computer technology over far better and newer alternatives. More specifically, it would be like choosing a phone without  G capacity which is less user-friendly and has fewer applications, when you could just as easily get a newer phone using better technology”, Kumalo says in an article.

“There is no doubt that DVB T2 offers the best technical performance, providing additional features and services that DVB T cannot. It enables a far greater number of channels, opening up multi-channel television to a wider audience of viewers and allowing them greater variety in their viewing options. In turn, this means increased stimulation for both local content and local production industries; increased advertising revenue for broadcasters; and greater tax inflows”.

Another area that Nchor said will need a lot of discussion is the allocation of frequencies to the various television stations. He did not hide his bias in favour of his own station, GBC, which, he said, would require one complete spectrum of about 20 channels and the remaining two spectrums totalling 40 channels shared among the privately owned television stations.

Independent Broadcasters

But Chief Paul A. Crystal-Djirackor, President of the Ghana Independent Broadcaster Association (GIBA) who has been involved with Ghana’s digital migration process from the very beginning believes that since the National Digital Migration Committee has settled on the DVBT system as its report presented to government indicates, that system should be used.

“You see”, he told me at his Crystal TV offices in Accra, “technology is very dynamic and I believe we have to join its development at some point in time. I think that if we attempt to run to adopt every new development, we will be chasing upgrades every year”.

Crystal-Djirackor, however, said that nothing stops the committee from looking at other technological possibilities beyond the report submitted to government based on their redundancy, standards and affordability characteristics.

Another issue that Crystal-Djirackor, as GIBA president, did not quite concur with GBC’s Nchor was that of channel allocation to broadcasters. He said that his association preferred a system whereby every broadcaster’s capacity should be allowed. If a broadcaster demonstrates that it can efficiently handle the number of channels it applies for, he should be allowed to prove himself.

Crystal-Djirackor was particularly insistent about the need for stakeholders to be vigilant and be on the lookout for foreign companies who may come in at this time offering themselves as partners eager to help us migrate to digital with the provision of set-top boxes but who are rather in for their own business interests.

He said that such offers have been made to some African countries who have naively swallowed the bait only to realise in the end that those who controlled the delivery of set-top boxes invariably also exercised control over access to television programmes.

If there is one optimism over which both the state-owned and independent broadcasters share, it is their belief that they are on the right track and are certain to meet the migration deadline of June 2015. “It is achievable”, Crystal Djirackor told me.  He was also full of commendation for the government for involving  all stakeholders in the migration process and thus keeping the whole business transparent.

Showbiz window shopping reveals that only about five per cent of television sets on the Ghana market are equipped to receive digital broadcast. Nchor told me that nobody should be deceived into thinking that flat screen TV or LCD or Plasma, that go for a minimum of GH¢600, are necessarily digital.

He suggested that it will be unwise for consumers to buy any new TV set now in preparation for digital migration. “Don’t buy now”, he said, “until a final decision is made about which system Ghana will settle for”.

Meanwhile, the best preparation that consumers can make now towards digital migration is to start saving for a set-top box  which on average may cost GH¢100. This may be quite a bill on the high side for many consumers, especially the rural poor, who are now buying their TV sets, especially the imported second-hand types, for less than GH¢50 and may be looking up to government to offer some reliefs.

— Graphic Showbiz, March 10, 2011