Abstract

The purpose of embarking on this study was to provide a well-detailed account on the

impact of digitization of the Broadcasting Media in Nigeria. The study ascertained the

level of media digitization in Nigerian Television Authority, Enugu (NTA) in this Era

of ICT and internet operations. The researcher used survey research design to enable

her determine the sample size which is 150 through the appropriate statistical method

to represent the population of the study. Survey Research Method was employed in

the collection of data because it is easier to sought people’s opinion using

questionnaire. Data gathered from the study were analyzed and interpreted using

simple percentage and tables. Also summary of findings, conclusion and

recommendations were made on the study for future studies. CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background of the Study

Unlike many other inventions throughout history, the history of the television

credits many inventors instead of just one. In this case, there were many inventors

working on the idea of watching pictures on the screen.

The earliest proposal was in 1908, in a paper by A.A Campbell-Swinton which

postulated the use of Cathode rays. The First Practical demonstrations of television,

however, were developed using electromechanical methods to scan, transmit, and

reproduce image. As electronic camera and display tubes were perfected,

electromechanical television gave way to all-electronic systems in nearly all

applications.

The beginnings of mechanical television can be traced back to the discovery of

the photoconductivity of the element selenium by Willoughby by Smith in 1873, the

invention of a scanning disk by Paul Gottlieb Nipkow in 1884 and John Logie Baird’s

demonstration of televised moving Images in 1926. (Wikipedia, 2010).

A 23 year old German University student, Paul Nipkow proposed and patented

the first electromechanical television system in 1884. Although he never built a

working model of the system, variations of Nipkow’s spinning – disk “image

rasterizer” for television became exceedingly common, and remained in use until

1939. Constantin Perskyi coined the word television in a paper read to the

International Electricity Congress at the international world fair in Paris on August 25, 1900. Perskyi’s paper reviewed the existing electromechanical technologies,

mentioning the work of Nipkow and others.

However, it was not until 1907 that developments in amplification tube

technology, by Lee Deforest and Arthur Kom among others, made the design

practical. The first demonstration of the instantaneous transmission of still Sillhoutte

images was by Georges Rigrioux and as a Fournier in Paris in 1909, using a rotating

mirror – drum as the scanner and a matrix of 64 selenium cells as the receiver.

In 1911, Boris Rosing and his student Vladimir Zworykin created a television

system that used a mechanical mirror – drum scanner to transmit, in Zworykin’s

words, “very crude images” over wires to the “Braun Tube” (Cathode ray tube or

“CRT”) in the receiver. Moving images were not possible because, in the scanner,

“the sensitivity was not enough and the selenium cell was very laggy”. On March 25,

1925, Scottish Inventor John Logie Baird gave the first public demonstration of

televised silhouette images in motion, at Selfridge’s Department store in London. AT

& T’s bell Telephone laboratories transmitted halftone still images of transparencies

in May 1925. On June 13 of that year, Charles Frances Jenkins transmitted the

silhouette image of a toy windmill in motion, over a distance of five miles from a

naval radio station in Maryland to his laboratory in Washington, using a lensed disk

scanner with a 48-line resolution.

However, if Television is defined as the live transmission of moving images

with continuous tonal variation, Baird first achieved this privately on October 2, 1925.

But strictly speaking Baird had not yet achieved moving images on October 2. His

scanner worked at only five images, per second, below the threshold required to give the illusion of motion usually defined as at least 12 images per second. By January, he

had improved the scan rate to 12.5 images per second.

Television Broadcasting in Nigeria started with the initiative of the first

Western Region premier Chief Obafemi Awolowo who on October 31, 1959 launched

television broadcasting at Ibadan the head quarters of the region. The Western Region

went into partnership with the Overseas Rediffusion Limited. The Western Nigerian

Radiovision services limited were created with the responsibility of radio and

television broadcasting under one management.

Nigeria as the giant of Africa has to her credit, the first television outfit in

Africa, the Western Nigeria Television (WNTV) on NTA Ibadan. The emergence of

what is known today as Nigerian Television Authority (NTA) was borne out of the

sheer desire to cater for the crying needs of variegated audience in terms of News

gathering, packaging and transmission; this became the second oldest station after

(WNTV) resuming transmission on 1st October, 1960. The Degree No 24 of 1977

caused all existing television stations in the country to be taken over by the federal

government and then led to a change of name to Nigerian Television Authority

(NTA).

However, television broadcasting in Nigeria since inception has been

transmitting through analogue television which use complete waves to transmit

pictures and sounds. The major drawback of this is that location plays an integral

factor, disabling, distorting images and audio on Television in rural areas (Kombol:

2008, P. 13).