As Tanzania approaches transition from analogue to digital transmission, broadcasting stakeholders have expressed concern that the system could lead to flood of undesirable content in television programmes.
The stakeholders feared that people could use the opportunity to watch more foreign programmes which have been prepared based on foreign ethics and content regulations.
The concern was raised yesterday in Dar es Salaam at the broadcasters’ workshop attended by more than 100 delegates comprising all licensed broadcasters operating in Tanzania.
The workshop is part of the Annual Broadcaster’s Conference (ABC) scheduled for today with the theme: ‘Beyond Analogue Switch-off: Challenges and Opportunities’.
A renowned journalist Ayub Rioba said there are still challenges in terms of time and technology required to oversee the digital system.
“How much is the government able to control the digital system… we can’t control it much but we should not leave it uncontrolled,” Rioba queried.
He said it is not bad to share content from other countries but broadcasters should have different programmes with local content to differentiate them from foreign programmes.
Rioba said adverts these days do not encourage people to work hard, but only promote short-cut means of acquiring valuable things through ‘scratch and win’.
He called on the government to empower local producers to produce useful programmes which will value “home content” because the issue of content can easily be overwhelmed by programmes from other countries.
“We need to strike a balance in allowing creativity which will help teach and enable producers to produce good programmes with the required content,” he said.
For his part, Prof John Nkoma the Director General of Tanzania Communication Authority (TCRA) said the authority has policies, laws and rules governing content.
“People should not worry about this new digital system especially in the case of paying for the services,” he said adding: “Things are not much different from the changes which occurred with the introduction of mobile phones. We all remember that during the introduction of mobile phones people were anxious, but now they are enjoying the services.”
H said on the side of TVs, the production of programmes will be done by the TV stations including ITV, TBC, Channel ten, Star TV and EATV which will be shown for free, but broadcasting will be done by three specified digital companies.
He said one of the reasons for migrating to digital system by December 31, is to avoid the cost of running both analog and digital systems simultaneously.
The Director of Broadcasting Affairs with TCRA Habbi Gunze assured people that TCRA has arranged two systems which will be used to regulate the programmes broadcast by TV stations to ensure that the content adhered to the specified ethics.
“We will have a special machine to record all programmes while TCRA’s Consumer Society will give us views…we have guidelines which will guide them in giving out the views,” he said.
SOURCE: THE GUARDIAN
No comments:
Post a Comment