You’ll Soon Have To Pay To Watch ‘Free’ TV At Home- FG

Here’s the news in brief: Nigerians who own
television sets will soon have to pay
“annual content access fee” to improve
content and infrastructure of the country’s
broadcasting stations.
The fee is similar to the TV licence paid in
the UK ─ which is used to fund the British
Broadcasting Corporation (BBC).
As a result, the BBC does not accept
advertisements in the UK because it is
financed with tax payers’ money.
Government-owned broadcast stations in
Nigeria run on subventions as well as
advertising revenue.
Nigeria currently operates a radio licence
regime which is considered ineffective.
However, the federal government said it
would introduce “content access fee” to
replace radio licence fee ahead of
Nigeria’s migration to digital terrestrial
television broadcasting by 2015.
Information minister Labaran Maku made
this known at the opening of the extra
ordinary meeting of the National Council of
Information (NCI) in Abuja.
Maku said the planned content access fee,
which was currently undergoing final
adjustments, was expected to get the nod
of the federal executive council before the
migration.
He said that government and other
stakeholders would leverage on the new
technology to make the new format more
effective than the archaic radio licence
fees format.
Maku explained: “For a long time radio
licences have not been collected and in
other countries the public broadcast
services are run from fees collected on
broadcast content.
“But unfortunately in our country, the
existing constitutional provision has made
fee collection less effective.
“Now, we are undertaking a new format.
We are taking advantage of the digital
technology and looking beyond sending
people to go from place to place to collect
fees for broadcast content.”
According to him, under this new regime,
anyone seeking access to television content
has to pay an annual content access fee.
The minister outlined some of the
advantages of the new broadcast content
fee collection regime to include improved
financial capability for stakeholders “to
improve content and upgrade
infrastructure”.
He said this would help the Nigeria
Broadcasting Commission and other
stakeholders have access to adequate
funds for sustained upgrade of their
infrastructure for effective service delivery.
On the NCI meeting, Maku said Nigeria
was at crossroads to either transit
smoothly or risk being cut-off from the rest
of the world by June 2015 when the global
migration deadline takes effect.

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