Auntie, Can We Have Some Imagination Please?

I concede GBC is not exactly BBC. In fact in many respects they are about as much in the same league as one would dare suggest Scunthorpe United are in the same league as Arsenal simply because the two sides may have clashed in a third round FA Cup match. Yes, both are the aunties of broadcasters in their respective nations; they both operate bigger budgets than their competitors. And yes they both are usually the targets of criticisms by the competition for apparently being the beneficiary of institutional bias and for being the mouthpiece of the governing party. But one has to ask; what is the point of GBC as a (PSB) public service broadcaster?

Oh yes! And they both are acutely aware of their establishment status. Their income source is guaranteed, regardless of output. The BBC rakes in over £2b annually and while the GBC can’t command anywhere near that figure, their staff are at least guaranteed their wages from the tax payer come month’s end regardless of how poorly they perform. Like many others, they constantly groan about the inadequacy of their wages. If I worked there, I’d be lobbying hard to have Dan Lartey elected. You can’t argue much against a 400% hike in wages, can you, high-class fantasy or not?

To say GBC has under-sold Ghanaians is an under-statement. For decades, in fact since its inception, GBC has perpetually seen itself as primarily the tool of the government of the day. They have consequently lived up to that mark with remarkable success. Give them their due! Often they had no choice. Their leadership was hired and fired at the behest of the leader of the day, and the docile Ghanaian populace could do nothing about it. Consequently, GBC through their radio and television outputs has dished out such poor programming content that one wonders whether the leadership have ever known to do better.

The dawn of the fourth republic appears to have done little by way of a step-change in attitude and performance. In fact GBC has often behaved as if they are the mouthpiece of the government of the day. Their public service credentials are nothing to write home about, which is really pathetic when one considers all that they have by way of advantage over the competition. They have greater coverage over the country, which should instantly set advertising executives drooling at the prospect of the market available, yet they are always complaining of being cash-strapped. I am reliably informed by a Customs and Excise officer that they once abandoned an attempt to have an advert aired on GTV because the amount of hoops they had to jump through got to a ridiculous stage that they simply took their custom to a rival broadcaster. I bet no one at GBC cared a hoot because that lost revenue did not affect their particular bank balance or position within the organisation one iota. And I doubt it was the first or only time businesses have given up and taken their custom elsewhere. Also, GBC is a bigger organisation, which one might translate as implying greater resources in personnel and equipment to call on. And crucially as much as sentimentally, they are the first choice for majority of the public when national events are being telecast live (picture clarity allowing). So why is their performance so dismal?

You have to conclude that successive managements have simply been out of their depths and underperformed, particularly in this new age of technology. Whatever structural hurdles they face they have hardly demonstrated any ability to even grasp the potential available to them. Rather typical of the Ghanaian way of doing things, the creativity is in finding out what is wrong, not how to utilise the positives and advantages they have, however small they may be. And boy do they not have some potives?

GBC’s bias in favour of the incumbent government is a fact they cannot escape from. If you look at the amount of air-time they allocate to the incumbent, which happens to be the NPP at this present time contrasted with what they give the opposition parties, you don’t have to be a genius to find out who gets the greater coverage. As a PSB, particularly propped up by the taxpayers’ money in licence fees and salaries of the staff, GBC really ought to have robust systems and guidelines in place that ensures that fair coverage is given to the mainstream parties. To be effectively an appendage, or to put it cruelly the mouthpiece of one particular shade of opinion represented by a political party is unprofessional to say the least. But of course this is not their first such offence. They have always been at it, never relenting even in the nineties when Mr Rawlings was in charge and his loyal servant David Anaglate ensured the outfit effectively operated as a Rawlings/NDC public relations outfit. The fact that there has been an improvement on the 90’s with opposition parties having a look in is only a slight mitigation in their favour on the charge sheet. The establishment of the Media Commission with a broad remit to insulate state media from political interference has hardly been achieved, not when the State continues to provide the bread and butter for these media organisations.

GBC, like many businesses in Ghana often forget about their primary reason for existence. The management’s idea of ‘looking after their staff’ often takes them into fields as diverse as social work and banking, thereby annulling their effectiveness at doing what they are charged to do. If a private business organisation decides to offer soft loans to their staff to ease their financial difficulties, it is absolutely their choice. They have shareholders to explain their actions to. The taxpayer-funded business is in a different situation. Why should GBC managers use company resources to offer soft loans to their staff, a significant chunk of which ends up not paid back, and even if they are, the value would be far less than they were when handed out. Hasn’t the taxpayer been short-changed in that circumstance by a do-good but clueless management in how they dispense the funds available to the organisation? Three years ago when I interviewed a top official of the organisation for my dissertation on PSB in Ghana, he freely admitted to me the amount that had been effectively written off for a variety of reasons, and it was substantial. He seemed only mildly embarrassed by the admission. Meanwhile GBC owed significant amounts of money to creditors like electricity and water suppliers, while their total take-in from licence fee for the year was, I was told, 120,000,000cedis, hardly enough to cover hotel bills for correspondents, said my interviewer. It has to be said that at 3000cedis p/a, the licence fee is the only thing that has not been affected by price hikes in over a decade. And dodging payment remains as easy as bribing police officers. Why has successive governments failed to raise the fee obviously aware of its inadequacy? It surely has something to do with keeping the organisation as cash-strapped as possible, thereby keeping them dependent on the government as ever and thus doing their bid. A weak GBC will always be malleable for the government, won’t it? Still why would a broadcasting organisation divert insufficient funds from program making to disburse soft loans to staff if not for misplaced priorities and a warped sense of welfarism for staff?

If they had to work hard to generate profit in order to stay in business, I’m sure the management would have thought better of how they utilise their resources. As it is whatever their performance, whatever depths of inefficiency they plunge, their salaries will be paid.

So why has the management of GBC woefully failed to raise their game? It basically comes down to being clueless about what mass media is all about, which leads on to misplaced priorities by the management, a point made by a literary luminary I interviewed. It takes a certain amount of ingenuity or stupidity to miss an important occasion such as the period after voting closes in national elections and results begin to trickle in. What does GTV put out on air? Gospel music while private broadcasters reorganise their scheduling to show the results. On the eve of the country going to the polls in 2004, GTV sees no need to have a program that allows voters to have a chance of examining the issues at stake closely so they show a documentary about Japan.

One might also ask of GBC, and this deals with both TV and radio! Does the broadcaster have any experts in the various fields to call on for expert knowledge on topics such as health, education, housing, international affairs, agriculture, business development, town planning etc? I know every expert worth their salt will not come cheap, but that should be a reason to utilise resources better not playing the banker and doling out soft loans to staff. Being shackled by a lack of funds will always stunt their efforts and make the broadcaster no more than just another big national organisation feeding off the taxpayer but delivering pretty little in return.

In the digital age and over 70years of existence (43years of television service) it is so pathetic to see GBC, the auntie of broadcasters in the nation still struggling to grapple with the basics of broadcasting and communication.

In spite of my reservations about the broadcaster, I still think GBC should remain in public hands but with a structure and funding arrangement that allows it to remain relevant and competitive in the digital age. In part two, I will discuss in detail how I believe that can be done.

Views expressed by the author(s) do not necessarily reflect those of GhanaHomePage.