The Director-General of the Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria, (FRCN), Ben Egbuna, has said that paucity of funds and obsolete equipment remain the major factors militating against it. Fielding questions from newsmen in Bauchi, Egbuna regretted that the Corporation was still faced with the problem of obsolete equipment. He said, “As it is now, we have transmitters that are as old as 40 years which are also analogue while everything in the world has gone digital.”
The FRCN boss also lamented that the lack of the modern broadcast equipment have negatively affected the services of the Corporation adding that this can be noted in its poor revenue generation capacity because, according to him, no advertiser will want to place his advert in a not too stable broadcast. However, he said the Corporation has done its best to stay above board, pointing out that a few new pieces of modern broadcast equipment have been procured and installed.
He added that the problems faced by the Corporation was that, “our men here are still learning how to manage the equipment. As soon as they are done, our broadcast quality will definitely improve.”
On the FRCN Zonal Stations in Ibadan and Enugu, the Director-General declared that, “these are dead because of lack funds to replace the equipment that has gone completely bad. The only shortwave station still on air is Kaduna, that too is down for now due to damage to the transmitter by a rainstorm, but our engineers are right now there trying to fix it and very soon it will come back on air.”
(Source: R Netherlands Media Network Weblog)
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