To increase media market potential and commercial sustainability, the Minister of Information, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, has asked media owners to embrace syndication.
Speaking on the media landscape in Ghana, the minister noted that hundreds of media houses sprang up due to the industry boom in the early 90s but were unfortunately financially unsustainable.
He said it meant that more media stations were fighting for the same revenue.
“So right from the onset, one of the things I want to encourage you to do is explore ways to syndicate the radio station with other like-minded stations in the region or across the country to tap into the market potential of those stations to grow the listeners of the station and be financially viable,” he proposed.
“As more and more media houses open, the reality on the other side is that the commercial market for media operations is not expanding that much,” he added.
At the opening of Oil City Radio, a new radio station in Takoradi in the Western Region, on 30 May 2022, the broadcast journalist and lawyer said smaller media houses combining their market shares to create a larger footprint for programming could command significant revenues with which they could pay their staff better.
The radio station is expected to serve Kwesimintsim, Apremdo, Anaji, and Airport Ridge, among other communities, to educate and sensitize locals to the development agenda of the regional administration and project businesses.
Low ranking
Mr. Nkrumah said the highest contributor to Ghana’s low ranking in the new framework for measuring press freedom, according to the Reporters Without Border (RSF) 2022 World Press Freedom Index, was the poor economic state of media houses and journalists.
According to the report, economic factors greatly influenced media work in Ghana.
The minister, therefore, urged the media to consider the syndication of programs and revenues across multiple platforms to ensure the financial viability of some struggling media houses and ensure the freedom of journalists to do their work without financial inducement.