The National Communications Authority (NCA) has commissioned a national Broadcasting Monitoring Centre (BMC) in Accra.
This is to help measure transmission parameters of frequency modulation (FM) and television (TV) in the country and also to enable the NCA to secure proof of deviations for enforcement of authorisation conditions.
The Director-General of NCA, Joe Anokye, at a ceremony on Tuesday was optimistic the centre would ensure broadcast service quality for consumers.
“By late 2017 it had become apparent that we could no longer rely exclusively on periodic spectrum monitoring to verify compliance with technical conditions associated with authorisations, neither could we fully leverage our legacy systems to efficiently manage the increased number of broadcast authorisations,” Mr Ankoye said.
He stated the first BMS was installed at the NCA office in 2018 and was expanded to the regional offices between 2019 and 2020.
To check and rid airwaves of nonchalant advertisements, especially with regards to spiritualists and rituals, he revealed that the NCA and the NMC signed a memorandum of cooperation on June 15 2021 to regulate broadcast content in line with the provisions of Section 3(c) of the NCA Act 2008 (Act 769).
The Board Chairman of NCA, Isaac Osei-Bonsu Jnr, on his part, reiterated with the rapid development of the radio and TV industry and its convergence with telecommunications, it had become necessary to ensure the quality of broadcasting services.
This, he explained, was because broadcasting was now competing with new technologies which showed clearer and sharper content via data services.
He added the system will now provide evidence of what goes on in the broadcasting
landscape and will bring some sanity to the media landscape and will also force
Broadcasters to operate within their bandwidth to avoid interruptions.
The BMC is an independent monitoring system for the analysis of the frequency and technical
specifications of Television and FM radio broadcasting services.
The installation which was designed by an indigenous Ghanaian engineering firm that monitors all 13 satellites providing Free to Air (FTA) satellite TV services over the territory of Ghana and also has the ability to record 100 video channels (terrestrial and satellite) and produce them for review, analysis or evidence.
