Communications Minister, Ursula Owusu-Ekuful, has disclosed that private broadcasters which is fronted by the Ghana Independent Broadcasters Association (GIBA) will soon pay fees for being hosted on the Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT) platform.
Private broadcasters in the country for close to three years have been hosted on the existing DTT platform for free as part of a roadmap to switch the country from analogue broadcasting to DTT broadcasting.
The free hosting was meant to give a firm footing to indigenous private broadcasters who had already invested heavily in the process to migrate and transmit from analogue to digital, and to whip up the appeal for other private broadcasters to buy into the digital migration agenda.
The Communications Ministry is scheduled to meet GIBA and other important state and non-state stakeholders on Wednesday, September 29, 2018, to discuss a myriad of issues including the digital switchover roadmap, management of the DTT platform, the draft DTT policy among others.
“At that next meeting, we are going to going to be discussing fees that you [GIBA] are going to be paying after being hosted on that platform for free for over two years. All these are issues that need to be discussed,†Mrs Owusu-Ekuful said.
She added “they [GIBA members] are all aware that they have to pay at some point. That platform will have to be self-sustaining. It is not a charity.“
The Minister dropped the hint about the upcoming DTT-hosting fees on Saturday on news analysis programme, Newsfile, during a heated discussion about GIBA’s suspicion that StarTimes may soon be handed the contract to manage the DTT platform on the blind side of stakeholders in the sector.
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