INFLUENCE OF RADIO OWNERSHIP ON PROFESSIONAL JOURNALISM PRACTICE

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background of the study

The Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria is the Pioneer Broadcast Organization in Nigeria with a rich culture of excellence. Available records reveal that Radio Broadcasting was introduced into Nigeria in 1933 by the then colonial Government. It relayed the overseas service of the British Broadcasting Corporation through wired system with loudspeakers at the listening end. The service was called Radio Diffusion System, RDS. From the RDS emerged the Nigerian Broadcasting Services, NBS in April 1980.

Prior to the NBS, the colonial Government had commissioned the Nigerian Broadcasting survey, undertaken by Messrs Byron and Turner which recommended the establishment of stations in Lagos, Kaduna, Enugu, Ibadan and Kano. Mr. T.W. Chalmers, a Briton and controller of the BBC Light Entertainment Programme was the first Director-General of the NBS. Radio ownership and control has since colonial times been subjected more to political exigencies than economic forces. Successive governments have, in the laws they enact and enforce, made it abundantly clear that the press was at the mercy of politics, and that the political tune to which a paper dances was enough to ensure its survival or death Abramsky, (2005).

The laws and their implementation have seldom encouraged private investment in the media nor given radio proprietors reason to believe that it is feasible to run it as a business by attracting advertisement revenue with good circulation figures. The government shows that it is more interested in containing the media politically than in providing its proprietors and practitioners the enabling economic environment they need for professional excellence and financial independence. This has brought about the underdevelopment of the press by imposing on it a series of constraints. No one who knows what a radio looks like (in content and form) take seriously.