Since the handshakes between Ghanaian television stations and the international media giants, the former have gradually, maybe unconsciously become patterned after their fancy. In other words, the Ghanaian television channels that are being saturated and seemingly competing in news and current affairs, look very much like the international media outlets purposely established for news and current affairs.
Even extended materials such as documentaries are the details and embellishments to the news items. With the hard news increasingly becoming the focus of the local stations, the spotlight is dimmed to creative programmes which includes entertainment.
Sports are entertainment, an area television stations in Ghana are devotees but then, the commitment is limited to coverage for organized events and discussions on the events. Sports features are inadequate. Some of the local stations have taken to live music and reality shows which panders to only the youth as target audience.
Television in Ghana now also look like the extension of radio frequencies because of the high density of talking. Some of the outlets literally lift radio content onto television platforms, intensifying the cacophony on television. It is no doubt that television production is capital intensive, thus absence of creative content on television in Ghana represents the lack of logistics or the sheer lack of ideas.
The combined effect of the dominance of news and current affairs on television promotes national awareness among the citizenry. In effect, the information flow continues to overshadow education and entertainment. Television is what the audience sees and offers them ocular proof of what is spoken about. It is therefore an avenue for showing entertaining programmes to become sources of leisure necessary for the health of people.
Two indicators of indolence in television programming are the easy way outs such as discussions in studios and the verbatim transposition or transcription of internet materials to regular television. In the mad rush to outcompete each other in news delivery, drama, theatre and programmes on hobby for instance are left behind, and in their stead the rather boring foreign telenovelas, and music clips have been employed to occupy space. Kumawood movies have helped in entertaining but again their preponderance show the lack of in-house programmes on that score.
There are some stations with news and current affairs content as their core business. Some are doing so well in that respect and even compares with the international giants. It is however important that Ghana does not lose sight of the fact that television is important medium for the enhancement of national values and promotion of national unity. The immoral verbiage associated with marketing of some drugs on local language television is worrisome just as the lack of creative content adds only a little drop on the knowledge of the viewer.
Let’s note that radio is premised on giving detailed account of circumstances since the luxury of video footage is not there. When television with the full of complement of visuals also walk that rope, then it becomes radio. The actual television style is the one practiced by astute sports commentators who do not comment on every scene but give room for viewers to glean from pictures, with the supplement of additional information not available on the running footage.
