The high rates place of advertisements on the Nigerian National network television, the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA), has been explained as necessary for the survival of the mega station.

This was the response of the Chief Executive of NTA, Mr. Tom Iredia, in an exclusive interview with this reporter at the Nigeria's Pavilion 111 at the Riveria here in Cannes.

Mr. Iredia who led the NTA crew to the prestigious festival remarked that, since the government has withdrawn subvention to the television network on capital projects, it became imperative for the organisation to look internally for revenue generation. "We pay satellite rates in dollars, our rates are based on cost of production and you know that television production is very expensive and new equipments are very exorbitant", he added.

The soft-spoken veteran broadcaster even felt the rates are not very high: "Despite your view, the space is saturated, we cannot take all the adverts that we get. TV is capital intensive and operators must cover costs"

On the usual practise of local stations linking up with the national stations for programmes that are mainly government events, Iredia defended that "network programme is not driven because its government function. We have live coverage of events; it may be a political rally, even of the opposition party. It is follows a time schedule. When it is football nobody complains, but when it is government we complain because from history, any African is anti-government".

The chief executive who rose through the ranks to attain his present position remarked decentralising NTA from two to ten network centres was one of his major achievements: "The organisation was formerly over centralised, leaving no room for initiative or discretion down the line. I created 10 network centres, which means NTA can originate and transmit news from 10 centres across the nation. Today, NTA has many stars but they have always been there, I did not bring in any. It was just that they were not given the opportunities".

His goal for NTA, in his words "is to stabilise and sustain what we have been able to achieve, provision of more facilities, improving training opportunities". The NTA College, to this end, is now a degree awarding institution."

Ask him about the idea behind the NTA International Station, inaugurated recently by President Olusegun Obasanjo; his eyes immediately wear a grin: "It is to provide African history to the rest of the world. Other networks transmit negative things about Africa, giving wrong impression that nothing good happens. That is not correct. We observed that Africa has been grumbling without efforts to counter media imperialism, so we came out with the bold initiative. It is everywhere now, people are still watching for free. We want people to get used to it before we scramble."

On some TV stations that play films labelled NTBB, Iredia pass the question to the censor's board: I" I am not good at watching other stations and can't certify on that. You can ask people at the censor's board. Certainly it is not on NTA", he concluded.

Tunde Oladunjoye
Cannes, France