Embattled former Director General of Nigerian Television Authority, NTA, Mallam Usman Magawata, has debunked allegations of highhandedness, and\u00a0 inept leadership insisting that his achievements as NTA boss are glaring for all to see.<\/p>\n
Mallam Magawata who spoke in Abuja to Pointblanknews.com\u00a0 said, he achieved all the feats solely with internally generated\u00a0 revenue maintained that\u00a0 , his tenure\u00a0 placed the NTA on the front burner in modern television broadcasting.<\/p>\n
He pointed out that, in order to give viewers more choice of specialized programming, four (4) new channels were established as part of the multichannel project. These new channels, according to him,\u00a0 could\u00a0 be viewed on the Startimes platform currently available in eight (8) Nigerian cities via\u00a0 NTA News 24, Nta entertainment, NTA Knowledge and NTA Sports 2.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn order to drive the four (4) new channels, a broadcast automation system known as\u00a0 Wondercube was installed which consists of six channel automatic play out system simultaneously completely unattended to by human operatives; ten seat newsroom computer\u00a0 for automating the news production process of NTA News 24; 120 Terabyte capacity Blue Ray Archiving system that can last for over 100 years; 4 seat ingest system for video material from tapes and 6 non-linear edit suites.<\/p>\n
Mallam Magawata also said that on 29th July 2010, he launched the first digital terrestrial television network in Nigeria in a joint venture with Star Communication and Network Company of China emphasizing that, the venture has led to what is today known as NTA-Star TV whose transmission according to him commenced immediately in Lagos and Abuja with 36 channels.<\/p>\n
\u201cStartimes now transmits over 50 channels and have since expanded to Kano, Ibadan, Port- Harcourt, Kaduna, Benin and Onitsha with over 600, 000 subscribers\u201d, he empahsised.<\/p>\n
Responding to a question, the former DG mentioned other achievements to include: \u201cinstallation of forty (40) VSAT terminals in all state capitals across the federation which has integrated internet connection and breaking news sharing.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn order to facilitate the transmission of news of interest to Nigeria from across the world, news bureaus were set up in strategic cities across the globe including Accra, Cairo, London, Washington and Ottawa.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn 2009, Nigeria was billed to host the FIFA Under 17 football competitions and NTA as the national broadcaster had to upgrade its outside broadcast vans (OBvans) from standard definition to high definition in order to meet FIFA technical requirements. NTA under my leadership upgraded 6 OBvans as well as the International Broadcast Centre from standard definition to high definition.<\/p>\n
Again, he said, in order to bring about inclusiveness, 3 local language channels have been set up with a full complement of staff and equipment, test transmission commenced in January 2012. \u201cIn the past 20 years, NTA have not undertaken any massive recruitment exercise but I was able to obtain the necessary permissions from government to recruit staff; so far over 2,000 staff have been recruited in addition to purchasing modern camera, editing suites and other digital equipments for all NTA stations. It was also during my time that about 20 journalists were trained and equipped with cameras, marking touch computers and other accessories\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cDuring the 2011 elections, about 16 sets of live streaming equipment were purchased which greatly enhanced the coverage of the elections where all the political parties were given equal coverage opportunity to market their ideas.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe expansion project which started in 2001 was less than half completed at the inception of this administration. So far, over 20 community stations have been completed as part of the expansion project and the projects were undertaken. Many new programmes were introduced on the network service to promote government activities. They include, Nigeria Today, Bridges etc.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Embattled former Director General of Nigerian Television Authority, NTA, Mallam Usman Magawata, has debunked allegations of highhandedness, and\u00a0 inept leadership insisting that his achievements as NTA boss are glaring for…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5153,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5151","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-exclusive"],"yoast_head":"\n