Joe Anokye addressing the media at the commissioning of the Broadcasting Monitoring Centre
The National Communications Authority (NCA) has established the Broadcasting Monitoring Centre (BMC) to ensure the quality of broadcasting through comprehensive monitoring.
The establishment of the BMC centre is to also protect consumers of broadcasting services against bad broadcasting. This is in conformity with Section 5C of the NCA Act 769.
The Act seeks to protect the interests of consumers or users of communication networks or services, and in particular the interests of consumers’ choice, quality of services, and value for money.
Addressing the media at a brief ceremony, Board Chairman of the NCA, Isaac Osei-Bonsu Jnr, indicated that the establishment of the Broadcasting Monitoring Centre will solve some challenges faced in the broadcasting space in the country.
These include ensuring efficient spectrum management, making sure that operators in the field deliver on the technical specification that they are required to, and having a smart digital archiving system for the broadcasting content.
Broadcast media monitoring solutions such as the BMC plays an important role in our society, for content monitoring for various institutions including but not limited to the National Media Commission (NMC), National Security and other security apparatus, Food and Drugs Authority (FDA), and Ghana Music Rights Organisation (GHAMRO) among others.
Mr. Osei-Bonsu Jnr also established that it will force broadcasters to operate within their bandwidth to avoid interruptions, saying, “This initiative allows observing the media without any form of interruptions.”
The Director General of NCA, Joe Anokye, referred to 2021 widespread public concern about the negative repercussions of the ritualist contents of television stations that entertained spiritualists as well as charlatanic advertisements which mislead large sections of the public.
There were calls on the regulatory institution with oversight over the electronic media; the National Media Commission and the NCA to take action to deal with the issues.
The Broadcasting Monitoring Centre has 16 satellite receivers and monitors all the 13 satellites providing Free to Air (FTA) satellite TV series over the territory of Ghana. It records content for 100 TV stations and 50 FM stations.
“With the continuous support of the NCA Board, we hope to scale up to exhaustively cover more stations in Phase 2 of the project,” he said.
BY Prince Fiifi Yorke