RADIO

& TELEVISION CONTENT PRODUCTION

A presentation by GREGORY ODUTAYO Managing Director, Royal Roots Nigeria +234 803 226 3030 Email: gregodutayo@royalrootsng.com

The Radio and Television content production industry in Nigeria and Africa as a whole is a huge growing concern. I will generally speak from the Nigerian perspective because that is where I know very well and where I do business. It is said today that the Nigerian Radio and Television content Producer is an endangered specie because of the very unfavorable production climate in which we have to work currently and produce content for broadcast. In years past, we have had sponsorship of drama content, sitcom, series etc. in Nigeria but in the recent past, the sponsorship have practically dried up. Sponsors in Nigeria today are to a large extent only interested in acquiring and producing reality and Game Shows. These have been predominantly dominated by the musical shows Project Fame, Naija Sings and Idols all sponsored by the big telecom companies in Nigeria. Like they are wont to say, such shows deliver the numbers in terms of viewership and followership. The well known franchises from reputable production companies like Endemol, Shine International etc. are also more popular all over the African continent and are somewhat easier to sell to prospective sponsors than home grown reality and Game shows. We are wont to acquire these shows at sometimes-huge option fees with its attendant support for that creative industry to the detriment of the homegrown franchise. Everyone wants a ready-made material. Where does this leave all other genres of production like the drama series and sitcoms. Penniless I will say.

In Nigeria today as a producer you have the unenviable task of creating your content, looking for the money to produce and package it and from there you are at the mercy of the broadcast stations to secure airtime in order to be able to expose your content to the world to see. If and when you are able to secure the airtime, it always comes at a huge price. You are required to pay, mostly quarterly in advance for the airtime. Nigerian Television station hardly commission content, hence my referral to them as airtime vendors because that is essentially what they do, vend airtime. So long as you can pay for the time, it is given to you irrespective of what you want to do with it. Even if you desire to pick your nose for the next 30 minutes, the stations are willing to collect your money and vend airtime to you. Whether the audiences are watching or not is of little or no interest to them. Well at least for now. With your secured and paid airtime, you are now at the mercy of the media agencies who are expected to advertise on your programme with the brands in their stables. With a lot of the agencies, it is not about how good or how exciting your programme or content is. It is not so much about ratings but rather on how well disposed they are to you or your programme. For some however, they are looking for data. But these are a negligible few. You then have to try and balance the books to remain on air and make your money back through spot adverts. Your ability to pay for the airtime as and when due is what determines your stay on air. The media and advertising agencies that buy into your programme then take forever to pay. Payment terms range from between 60 90 days after invoicing which happens at the end of each month. In effect, you are in a situation where you spend all your resources ensuring that you come up with a high quality programme, paying airtime upfront and then waiting for over 90 days to get paid for the adverts placed on your programme.

It does not end there though, sometimes an adhoc programme comes up and the stations in Nigeria do what they call pre-emption. Pre-emption is when you are informed that your programme will not be running that week due to some programme displacing you on an interim basis. Sometimes you are accommodated within another time belt; sometimes you are left all alone. It is a very one sided relationship. One designed to suit only the Television station ownership. All of these have huge consequences for you as a content producer because you are losing revenue and face at the same time. The advertisers stop trusting you and your content and worry about consistency for no fault of yours. However the stations are smiling to the bank. They have sold the same time to two people.

All said, as a producer you get to be in control of both the creative process and the marketing process as well as to an extent, the distribution process.

Another major challenge facing us as radio and Television content producers is the lack of basic infrastructure to make the production process a flawless one. What we spend producing a 24 minutes programme in Nigeria cannot be compared to what our South African counterpart who has commissioned content mostly goes through. When my company, Royal Roots were commissioned by MNET South Africa to produce a 48 minutes drama series, Edge of Paradise in 2005, a lot of human and material resources was pumped into that experience and Edge of Paradise ruled and is actually still ruling the airspace of content production in Africa. After that experience, there has been little or no follow up from the broadcasters on commissioning of contents

Another huge infrastructural challenge is power. Power is a very big challenge in Nigeria. To produce your content effectively, you have to run on generators. In so doing, there is a lot of noise and air polluted and these in a lot of ways create a lot of challenges for the producer. This has a tendency to hugely increase your operating costs. 3

Production for television is mostly done on location and there is a growing concern now in preparation for digitization to shoot on High Definition. We at Royal Roots have actually been producing all of our contents on High Definition for the past three years. This is in preparation for the full digitization of Africa. We have also recently acquired two large sound studios of 5,100 Sq ft and 4,800 sq ft called the E-Studio and the DM-Studio respectively for the production of our contents in-studio. This recent acquisitions of the E and DM Studio have increased our capacity to produce the kind of quality programming synonymous with us at Royal Roots under a more production conducive environment leading to lower unit cost but higher output. It is the way to go for any serious content producer. On the radio front, there is no discernable programme creation structure on radio. There is a dearth of creativity on radio especially in Nigeria. What we have been exposed to are on air personalities playing music and generally talking. Talking about what, we really cannot discern. The OAP is more often than not delights in listening to his or her voice and is usually on an ego trip. Add a few telephone callers calling in to add to the charade and you have what can be referred to as the story of Nigerian radio production. The phone-in show is the laziest approach to broadcast programming in Nigeria. This is a fad that has been taken to new heights by Nigerian Television and radio stations. We have 4 5 hours of programming strung together by only one thing call-ins. Most of the radio stations in Nigeria have adequately taken advantage of modern technology. There are automated equipment, touch screen computers, less staff, clean audio with a generous stream of on-line broadcasts accessioned by the use of twitter and Facebook. From Cool FM to Rhythm to Star FM to Raypower to Wazobia FM onto Brilla Sports, City FM, Inspiration FM, Classic FM etc I could go on and on. However this is where it all ends. Listen to one you have heard it all.

Radio broadcasting needs to be seriously re-defined on the African continent especially in Nigeria. Emphasis needs to be on a more focused and directed programming. Radio Content needs to be more refined and defined. This is the Nigerian model both on television and on radio. Despite all these myriad of problems, the Nigerian Television content industry has grown tremendously in the past three years. The growth of Nollywood had led to the expansion of the creative network of personnel for the industry that has sort of spilled over to Television. Nigerian Television contents represented all over Africa by such programmes and content like Edge of Paradise, Bellas Place, My Mum & I, About to Wed, Soul Sistas etc. from the Royal Roots stable, Super Story, This Life series and Papa Ajasco has adequately represented the Wale Adenuga stable, Paul Igwes Clinic Matters, Apreel Ventures Dear Mother and Spiders, AK Medias Family Ties & Nowhere to be Found amongst several others. What we have sought to do as producers is to focus on our strength in order to overcome the monumental challenges. We have directed our energies at creating enduring stories, themes and plot lines that will allow us to expand our distribution market well beyond the Nigerian, West African & African Markets. One thing is that Nigeria with its over 140 million people and well over 250 ethic groups has millions of stories to tell. We as content producers have a rich bouquet of stories to deal in that will be of interest to the rest of the world. As content producers, we rely on the further distribution of our programmes to other African countries in search of rich local content to satisfy the craving of their audiences for local African content.

There is a potentially huge market for good African stories across the African continent spanning Kenya, Ghana, South Africa, etc. There is also a growing demand for these content in the francophone countries of Africa. The challenge we however face is a comparison of our content to the Mexican and Spanish series that dot the broadcast landscape of Africa. These contents that have English dub are a potential threat to the local as well as African industries. Over 3 years ago, the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation (NBC) the broadcast regulators in Nigeria due to massive advocacy from producers in Nigeria, designated the prime time belt in Nigeria exclusively to what was referred to as local content programmes. These were programmes of mainly Nigeria and African origin. In effect, between the hours of 7PM and 10.00 PM daily. This led to the boom that we are now experiencing with Nigerian producers and content. This was hitherto impossible because that prime time was populated by the Spanish and Mexican series. They were moved to earlier times or later times and this was largely responsible for its decline in Nigeria. Now local Nigerian contents are king in the Content landscape in Nigeria. But the foreign soaps still pose challenges to us. Not in terms of quality of production or content but because the typical station programme manager all over Africa is largely interested in acquiring our content for distribution in Nigeria and Africa at sometimes ridiculous rates. We are often times told that they buy the foreign soaps for as little as $100 per episode and as such see no reason why they should pay more for yours. Is this the basis for the development of the sector in Nigeria and Africa as a whole?

The foreign soaps and series that we all rush over to markets like this and DISCOP and MIPCOM etc to acquire, were they produced on the basis of sales at $100 per episode? We as programme acquisition managers need to see the need to fully partner the content industry to grow. We need to go back to the era when Television and radio stations practiced the business of broadcasting the way it is done all over the world. Television stations all over the world call producers to pitch their works based on specific briefs. Such productions are fully funded by the broadcast stations and this frees the Producer to concentrate on his core business of creating the content and producing it. Do not add to us the burden of sourcing sponsorship and marketing. The world will be going fully digital in 2015. I as a Television and Radio content producer am hugely looking forward to the switchover. But are we producers of content in Africa ready for the game changing experience? Are we as broadcasters ready to step up to the plate to provide our platforms and recognize that content is king? Are we prepared to invest in the much-needed contents by commissioning content for the producers to produce? Are we willing to collaborate and work together with content producers to enlarge the market? Are we as distributors of content all over the world and specifically, the African continent ready to invest in programming so as to bring about more quality to the content market? As regulators, are we prepared to protect the stakeholders in the market and allow the investors to have the much-needed confidence in the market? Are we ready as regulators prepared to protect the practice of television and radio production investing in training and re-training of the practitioners? Are our markets ready and prepared to take full advantage of the expected boom that digitalization will bring to the Television and Radio market all over the world.

These are all questions begging to be answered. How well we answer them will determine how well we all as stakeholders are prepared to harness the Television & Radio industry all over Africa and the world at large. I thank you for your time. GREGORY ODUTAYO BFMA 2012