With signals in 54 countries, Arise escalates competition across Africa

The story, last week, that Arise News Channel is live in 54 countries in Africa, including South Africa and nine other Southern African countries on the platform of Multichoice, sent a ball of excitement down my system and, at once, elicited the kind of euphoria and patriotic fervency I feel when a Nigerian is doing something quite outstanding.

And there are so many Nigerians making history and bringing glory to the nation. In nearly every endeavour under the sun, Nigeria boasts of luminaries who brighten the world and bring memorable moments to a people in search of anything comforting, some good news in a welter of bad moments.

In education, sports, entertainment, medicine, business, just to list a few, Nigerians give performances that make something run down your spine and bring wetness to the face. Whether it is Tosin Amusan speeding on the tracks or Victor Osimhen jumping to score an impossible goal or the sheer bravery of Allen Onyema daring competition on international routes by crashing flight ticket costs to London, Nigerians attempt the impossible always and achieve results that shock the world.

Oh, was I elated years ago when I found out that the film, Concussion, I was watching in one international flight was based on the research work by Dr Bennet Omalu on the plight of NFL players who get exposed to what he coined as chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). It was only the Nigerian can-do spirit that sustained him in the fight with powerful members of the NFL who wanted to destroy him and kill the research by a Nigerian who started his early medical school at the University of Nigeria (UNN), Nsukka.

Nigerians fly high when they want to fly, putting behind them the worries of a nation that has refused to hit full gear. With the announcement, Prince Nduka Obaigbena, Chairman and Editor-in-Chief of Thisday Media Group and Arise News, has taken competition to some level beyond immediate imagination. Though a businessman, I have always looked at him as a stuntman in a movie who can risk everything to get desired results. His pocket of surprises is so deep that it is useless guessing what mysteries are laden in there. He has just pulled out one and it is such a whiff of good news for people who have followed the history of broadcasting in Nigeria, especially since the deregulation of the sector in 1992.

Arise News will be received on Multichoice/DSTV Channel 416 in South Africa and contiguous states. Arise is a 24-hours news channel.

Hear this. “We shall continually showcase the emerging African century where Nigeria and other African countries will be some of the leading economies around the world. This is a marathon and not a dash;  we will do for Nigeria and Africa what the CNNs, the BBCs and the Al Jazeeras have done for their nations and regions,” Fauziya Al Mohammed, Obaigbena’s Chief of Staff, said in the statement.

This is profoundly true; a statement of hope but also very emblematic of the complexities of TV programming. Launched on June 1, 1980, the Cable News Network (CNN) which enjoys the glistening reference as the first 24-hour news station in the world, didn’t enjoy the respect or cooperation of the broadcast industry which thought that its founder, Ted Turner, was insane. CNN wasn’t invited to major press conferences nor was it allowed to hang its microphones anywhere close. The station was pooh-poohed as the Chicken Noodle Network – CNN.

But one man’s vision persevered and prevailed, challenging the rest of the world to rise beyond the mundane and the daily fixations of life. So, when the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded a few minutes after launch on January 28, 1986, CNN was there to bring it to American homes and the global community. April 15,1989, CNN was at the Tiananmen Square in China to report the protest and massacre of young students. The Gulf War of August 2, 1990 to February 28, 1991 was literally fought in the living rooms of the global community courtesy of CNN.

And wait for this.  When Mikhail S. Gorbachev wanted to dissolve what was left of the USSR and sign himself out of office on December 26, 1991, his pen refused to function and had to borrow the Mont Blanc pen of CNN President, Tom Johnson, to cement a history of no return. It was the end of the Soviet Union and peace has become a stranger to that part of the world with Russia fighting notoriously to reclaim the glory that is long gone.

TV is much about self bravura and recondite intelligence to support actions and proclamations made in the public space. CNN plays this to the hilt.

Speaking days later to the Chicago Tribune, Johnson enthused: “I wasn’t ever thinking about my pen. We did it! We did it! – those were the words that came to mind.”

Was it mere coincidence that CNN’s Johnson wasn’t far away from Gorbachev? It’s  a lot of planning, plotting and intentionality. There is so much power in the media which America understands very well and has therefore been very willing to build CNN into a very powerful channel of diplomacy for the country, spreading its tentacles all over the world.

Does Prince Obaigbena have the capacity, creativity and indeed the chutzpah to confront the uncertainties of international TV programming and can he really replicate the epoch breaking achievements of CNN in our part of the world?

As I watch The Morning Show, The Global Business Report, the entertainment segment and live reports from the Oscars in Hollywood, sending a strong team to report from the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, live coverage of grade A events within the country, and indeed cast my mind back to the packaging of Thisday and the glossy Thisday Style, I have no shred of doubt that the Arise News promoter can run his race with peak success. But that is the straight answer that does not accommodate the complexities, jealousy, betrayal, manipulation and, above all, the strict regulations that exist in different jurisdictions.

The constellation of a stellar cast of on-air personalities, including: Dr Reuben Abati, Rufai Oseni, Ayo Mairo-Ese, Ojy Okpe, Steve Ayorinde, Emman Efeni, Rotus Oddiri and many more, perhaps marked the first phase of the station’s  readiness for a new broadcast world, which crystallised in some good news last week.

But it is good that Arise observed that the race is a marathon and not a dash. That is a reality check. Broadcast business is not cheap. Ted Turner suffered to establish the fortunes of CNN. Rupert Murdoch, sometime in December 1990, almost lost the entire fortunes of News Corp which today runs one of the biggest digital real estates in the world, because of some debt that proved difficult to reschedule. Back home, in March 2000, media front runner, Dr Raymond Dokpesi, nearly lost Daar Communications’ Raypower and AIT because of a N350m loan owed to a consortium of banks. Broadcasting is not cheap and it is risky business.

Obaigbena is a very smart fellow and must have more of this type of information than this writer. Otherwise, Arise wouldn’t be enjoying such a stratospheric rise in just over 10 years!

But the station will need more investment, some of the presenters will need more training, at least, to trim their excesses, there may be the need for more programming mix, including live events to attract more TV eyes, because that is what pay TV is all about. The organisation must develop a clear policy on what content to put on the international feed. Prince Obaigbena may need to play the local politics in different jurisdictions. Such is the unenviable fate of the international businessman.

But this is not a journey that Arise has to make alone or any other broadcaster or business person in Nigeria venturing into operations abroad. Multichoice and MTN may have come into Nigeria as private organisations but when there are serious regulatory issues, and there have been several, it becomes a government to government discussion. This writer has been reliably informed that South African businesses are given some incentives by their government to invest in other African countries.

CNN couldn’t become a global brand without the imprimatur of the American government. Nothing stops Arise or any other serious media organisation, for that matter, from enjoying such a discreet stamp of the Nigerian Government.

An industry expert lamented last night, “We do not even have an aggregated information policy in this country.”

Painful observation that it is, but it should not stop the Nigerian Government from recognising Nigerian corporates like Arise that are doing well, and seeking creative ways of encouraging or working with these organisations to help spruce up the nation’s image. Nigeria needs a lot of sprucing up right now.