The advent of internet and social media platforms have completely revolutionized how businesses and organizations reach out to their customers today. Thirty years ago, it would have been unimaginable for anybody to suggest this innovation in information sharing and communication, but here we are today. Internet access is moving at a very fast pace in Ghana even as the number of people with access to mobile phone devices and computers is increasing at equally a very high rate.

If there is any assurance moving forward as a society, then it is one thing, internet access is going to get bigger and social media shall be very influential in the lives of millions. Social media according to several experts is a collective of online communication channels dedicated to community-based input, interaction, content sharing and collaborations. Ghana is not exempted from this social media boom.

Thepurpose of this survey was to assess how our various traditional Television Stations that broadcast mainly via UHF (exception, Multi TV World) are taking advantage of this social media boom to deliver quality services to their audience in Ghana and around the world. The major benefit of these platforms is that it transcends national boundaries and appeals to millions of young men and women in Ghana and around the world.
As a young man, who scarcely watches Television, I have found social media platforms to be invaluable. By a click; I am able to access any information I require anywhere in the world, without the frustration of waiting fora television network to broadcast it. So, how are our Ghanaian based TV stations faring when it comes to their performance on social media?
This survey is limited to thepopular and traditionalsocial media platforms even though the number of social media platforms in the world today spans into hundreds. We restricted ourselves to the following platforms: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube. We were guided by the following questions? How many followers do these TV networks have on all these platforms? How active are their followers especially on Facebook, which is the biggest social media platform in Ghana today. How regular do these networks use these online platforms? We found that in the absence of the last two ranked networks i.e. TV Africa and Net 2 TV all the other networks were very regular in terms of provision of relevant content on these platforms.
We also realized that the overall performance of Ghanaian based TV stations on the various social media platforms is quite encouraging particularly on YouTube, where all the major TV stations have their own channels with viewership averaging close to 1.2 million every year (Net 2 TV excluded). Almost all the TV Stations surveyed do have different Facebook platforms for different TV programmes but this survey focused solely on the Official Social Media platforms of theseTV stations.
Viasat 1 TV’s dominance in terms of subscribers and active followership on all social media platforms, chiefly Facebook is unrivaled with GH One in second place and UTVGhana following in that order. TV Africa and Net 2 TV were virtually nonexistence on all social media platforms except YouTube and Facebook (The Morning Show) respectively. Kwame Despite’s UTV was third with a huge followership on Facebookwhere it ranked second to Viasat 1 Ghana. I must indicate that, huge followership on Facebook does not necessarily translate into very active interaction on the platform. We included the data of the average number of active contributors on all Facebook platforms at every moment where once again Viasat 1 Ghana ranked highest with over 40 000 active contributors every moment and ETV Ghana second placed with close to 30 000 active contributors.
GH One Entertainment TV also had a huge following, with over 200 000 followers on both Twitter and Instagram. By contrast, Metro TV and GTV were visibly absent and non-active on Instagram and Twitter. Surprisingly, our own National Broadcaster ranked sixth beating TVstations such as TV3 (which is very active on YouTube), and Metro TV. I must state that the National Broadcaster’s inactivity on Twitter and Instagram is inexcusable, especially in an era when citizens are made to pay TV Licenses (something I strongly oppose, personally). It is also important to underscore that due to the interactive nature of these platforms; the data gathered must be examined in connection with the appropriate period it was obtained and in this case as at 12th September, 2015. Spaces marked XXX in the table indicates that our team couldn’t identify any official social media platform.
Having reviewed all these platforms, our team contacted Alfred Sarpong of Viasat 1 Ghana who is the brain behind their dominance on the Social Media front. He intimated that, the future of television is very much tied to Social Media. He also stressed that moving forward as a society; social media shall remain very instrumental in nation building, particularly in terms of discussing very critical and relevant issues on national development. He finally disclosed that the secret to Viasat 1 Ghana’s success so far lies in three main factors, “hard work, hard work, and hard work.”
Indeed hardwork pays and we believe as the various TV Stations put more effort in delivering timely information and entertainment to their subscribers, the social media platforms in the country are going to even get bigger and better.
In all close to two million people have subscribed to at least one TV social media platform when we restrict ourselves to these four official platforms and the ten TV Stations that were used in this survey. See survey table below.


Ranking Ghana based TV Stations and performance on Social Media platforms.

Rank TV Stations Facebook
Followers Facebook
Talking
About Twitter Instagram YouTube
Subscribers Total Subscribers on all Platforms

1 Viasat One Ghana
517 027
40 000
76 836
11 000
3 694
608 557

2 GH One Ghana
89 448
4200
131085
80 000
814
301 347

3

UTV
256 968
933
2 034
XXX
817
259 819

4 ETV Ghana
227 720
29 000
9 400
XXX
2, 179
239 299

5 Multi TV World
120 000
170
7 029
XXX
7, 535
134 564

6
GBC/ GTV
102, 157
14 475
5
XXX
3 188
105 350

7 TV3 Ghana
79 879
1 476
9 136
2 484
10 220
101 719

8 Metro TV Ghana
64 031
251
1 072
XXX
296
65 399

9
TV Africa

XXX
XXX
XXX
XXX
580
580

10
Net 2 TV
2 940 (Unofficial Page)
XXX
XXX
XXX
XXX
2 940


Survey by,
G. K. Sarpong (gideon.sarpong@gmail.com)
www.amazon.com/author/gksarpong