‘We’ve found a common ground’ – John Momoh celebrates BBC’s partnership with ChannelsTV

John Momoh, chairman and CEO of Channels Media Group, says the professional ideals of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), a public service broadcaster in the United Kingdom, inspired his establishment of ChannelsTV.

Momoh spoke on Tuesday at an inter-organizational meeting to celebrate the two companies’ partnership for ‘Gist Nigeria’, a co-production between BBC and ChannelsTV, launched in April 2019.

According to him, the “Empire Service” of the BBC had always been his favourite as a kid.

He also said he had always hoped that his brand and the BBC would one day come to work together for  programs that pervade great audiences.

“As a kid, I would always listen to the Empire Service of the BBC. But over a period of time, one I got interested in broadcasting, I got booked onto the BBC Wall Service alongside so many of us that were growing up at that period,” Momoh said.

“We listened to the BBC Network Africa and other members of the cast on BBC. They showed a lot of professionalism before I went into broadcasting, they made an impression on me. It’s so interesting that, at that period, I was looking for a way to exhibit the kind of qualities that the BBC was known to be exhibiting.

“While I went through radio and television, it was my hope that, someday, we would be able to do things together. And voila! Here we are talking about six months of partnership with the BBC. I’m so delighted about that. You talk about the BBC; you talk about quality, good research, and professionalism.

“Those are the things that have set us together as two organizations that can find common ground. For the fact that we share the same ideals, we must always report facts, try to represent all sides to an issue an make sure we report whatever it is that we want to bo matter whose ox is gored.

“It’s no surprise that both have come together to come up with a good program that would be widely watched in Nigeria, Africa, London and the rest of the world.”

On his part, Jamie Angus, BBC’s director of the world service group (WSG), spoke on Gist Nigeria’s operational values and expressed his delight about the “original journalism that it produces for the Nigerian audience.”

He also announced the BBC’s willingness to partner with Nigerian broadcasters for the curation of new TV programs while syndicating existing English-based radio programmes to media brands that intend working with it.

“It’s really important to us that we work with a partner like Channels on the co-production of Gist Nigeria. We bring the BBC’s expertise and original investigative journalism on. But we also bring the trusted brand of a station like Channels which has a huge audience reach to find trusted information,” he said.

“We work with any broadcaster and every broadcaster in Nigeria who wants to share a program with us. Actually, we’re making a huge amount of new TV programs and we have a lot of radio programs available in English which we syndicate to any partner that wants to work with us.

“The BBC’s mission is to reach the maximum number of audiences. But I think, for a complex program like Gist Nigeria, we need to work with a partner who is really trusted and with whom could build a longterm relationship.”

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