Ebonyi Broadcasting Station Set For Test Run

The new Ebonyi Broadcasting Corporation (EBBC) will start to test run its equipment from January 2011, Gov. Martin Elechi announced in Abakaliki on Thursday.

The correspondent reports that the complex, which is expected to be completed in the last week of December, comprises an FM digital radio station and a television station.

“The core staff of the stations will be drawn from the existing Ebonyi Broadcasting Service (EBBS) and Ebonyi Cable Television,” Elechi said at a training workshop for the staff of the corporation.

“This is the reason for organising this training for the staff of both stations,” said the governor, who was represented by the state Commissioner for Information and Orientation, Chief Egwu Chima.

Elechi noted that the state government had invested more than N3 billion in the project as 90 per cent of the facilities required for its take-off had been installed.

“Participants who excel in this training stand a good chance of being incorporated into the EBBC family as part of the initiative to strengthen the new organisation.

 “We want to instill the concept of attitudinal change in the staff to avert the situation obtained in EBBS and ECTV where corruption, indiscipline and indolence are the order of the day,” he said.

The governor said the inauguration of the digital broadcast station was intended to place the state on the map of states in the country that had digitalised their broadcast operations.

“We are happy to have met this objective even before the Nigerian Broadcasting Commission (NBC) deadline, requiring all broadcasting stations in the country to change from analogue to digital form of broadcasting before June 2012,” he said.

Elechi urged the participants to avail themselves of the opportunity provided by the training, as the resource persons were tested hands in the broadcast industry.

Mrs Ngozi Eke, the South-East Zonal Director of the NBC, commended the state government for organising the training, saying the commission placed much emphasis on staff training to meet its digitisation target.