The National Broadcasting Commission (NBC) has announced a major working relationship that it reckons would revolutionalise the entertainment and broadcast environment in Nigeria.
Speaking at a recent meeting with stakeholders in Lagos, director general of the NBC, Mr. Emeka Mba, revealed the commission’s readiness to work with MIPCOM, a TV and entertainment market, essentially a content forum for co- producing, buying, selling, financing and distributing entertainment content.
MIPCOM provides the people involved in the TV, film, digital and audiovisual content, production and distribution industry a market and networking forum to discover future trends and trade content rights on a global level. It normally lasts four days.
Mba, who emphasised the importance of Nigeria being part of MIPCOM and hosting Africast, which comes up between October 21 and 23 in Abuja, said every stakeholder must take advantage of the opportunities that come with digitisation even as the transition date to digital broadcasting gets closer.
Maintaining that the future is digital, he amplified the need for content in the process, giving this as the reason the NBC fashioned certain policies to promote better content. He observed also that content has ecologically changed the broadcast industry. According to him, though the country has started the adventure with Africast, there is a need to take it higher by also focusing on the business of creating content.
For him, this is why Nigeria’s participation at MIPCOM is important because being the biggest market for content, stakeholders in the content creation sector in Nigeria need to get close and be part of MIPCOM.
Mba stated that Africast 2014 is coming at a crucial time for the broadcast industry as the country switches from analogue to digital terrestrial television broadcasting and works towards the grant of content provider and signal distributor licenses.
“We need to work together to realise the vision and a more dynamic industry. The idea of having Nigeria stand at the Cannes Film Festival is critical because we need to join the global discussion and learn how these things are done professionally besides having the connection. We do have a vision about what the future of television in Nigeria should be but that can only be achieved through collective efforts and not by NBC alone,” Mba argued.
According to him, Nigeria could better monetise its content production and be the audio-visual hub of the continent, as there is no other African country with a better potential.
The NBC, he said, really wants to reposition Africast as a reference point for the best of equipment and a destination for content every year, so that producers can find a market for their works.
“I believe that Nigeria is the hub of creative industry in Africa, what is missing is how to make money from it,” Mba added, and enjoined practitioners to be open-minded, as it will change the way business is done in the sector.
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