WHY ARE MEDIA HOUSES IN DISTRESS?

The emergence of new media in modern communications has lead to the development of wide ranging applications and opportunities in the ICT environment globally.

In Nigeria however, the impact of new media in our local media is greatly masked by the ineptitude of employers to provide adequate incentives to practitioners, who are poorly remunerated and often owed back log of salaries.

The implication of this is the lack of interest by new media practitioners to seek gainful employment in media houses and therefore unable to contribute to the expected growth and development of the practice in the sector and the country at large.

Until employers and other stake holders in the media industry pay adequate attention to these concerns, the expected positive impact and economic growth the country stand to benefit will continue to be elusive.

Though this is arguable, the truth however is that a lot of media houses worldwide are already paying the price for not embracing new media. Many are shutting down because they cannot keep-up with competition and are unable to key in and deploy new media technology in their operations.

Essentially and without over-emphasizing the fact, our local media houses are responsible for the dearth in new media practice in the country.

Comments

Missiles on Wheels

Sadly, only a couple of weeks ago, I lost a close family friend in a ghastly car crash along the Lekki - Epe expressway, involving a commercial vehicle, whose driver, probable drunk and driving without head lamps, ran across the road to the other side of the road, causing a head-on collision with her official vehicle. Every day, we see many commercial vehicles and tipper trucks, driving along the Lekki Expressway without head lamps at night. I have seen a big truck drive on this road with two of its rear tires completely absent, and was rolling on bear reams. Believe it or not, the road safety officials are all over the place. Whether they themselves see these things or not is not left for me to say. Another very dangerous practice by commercial bus drivers along the Lekki - Ajah axis, is that they disconnect the fuel tank of their vehicle and use a plastic container which they keep at the booth of the vehicle with a hose connected directly to the engine. This sam...

FG, Key to Full Internet Connectivity

The Internet sprouted from what was then a national computer network project called ARPANET, which was under the control of the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), an agency within the United States Department of Defence. The first countries to be connected to the Internet outside the U.S were England and Norway in 1973, and it was mostly used by universities, polytechnics and research agencies. Now, there are over a hundred countries with full Internet connectivity out of which only 11 are from the African continent (with the exclusion of Nigeria). Developments on the Internet in recent times had been very rapid, making it the world’s most advanced medium of communication with an installed base of over 50 million computers users linked worldwide, and an approximate annual growth rate of 2000 percent. The Internet is by far the fastest growing segment in the information technology industry. Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft, corroborated this fact when he said: “The surging popula...

Rebranding Nigeria Project

Beddes and Grosset Webster define brand as trademark; a particular make or kind of goods. Therefore, branding is essentially about products; and a communications function of design, packaging and publicity. The Nigeria rebranding project therefore is out of focus and faulty and requires urgent redefinition of the entire process. Rebranding in the context of the Nigeria experience should focus on our national identity, which in this instance are our products. Our national identity includes and not limited to our national anthem, flag, name of country, currency, crest and emblems, uniforms of our police and armed forces, our national colours etc. It is after the completion of the rebranding process that publicity and public relations commences. It is during this process that image laundering, and to put more aptly, 'social re-engineering' can be introduced. As it is practiced now, we are simply putting the cart before the horse. We need to re-align the process with internatio...

Word Monger

Search This Blog