CRTV needs a national English channel

The Cameroon Journal has learned of an initiative emerging from the Cameroon Radio and Television, CRTV Corporation to create six more affiliate channels for the TV station.

From what we gathered, all the six new channels will have almost nothing to do with news coverage – they, we learned are created to cater mostly for culture, entertainment, Sports etc.

We’re wondering whether wisdom and reason will prevail upon the management of CRTV to for once consider setting up an entirely English channel for the speakers of English in the country.

And this craving should not be seen as an attempt to push the Anglophone marginalization agenda, but a genuine decentralization reform that if effected, should go a long way to improving on the programing that current CRTV offers the nation.

Over the years, CRTV has continued to offer some of the worst programming especially in the area of newscast not just in the country but in Africa. The back drop is archaic, graphics appear hastily and terribly produced, the news content lacks substance and often as brief as in news headlines.

And one of the main reason behind this from an insider observation stems from management’s drive to produce news in both French and English simultaneously. In trying to achieve this, there isn’t enough time left for substantial coverage of news both in the French and English segments of the broadcast. Sometimes in live newscasts, you literally see live reports cut short because of segment time constraints.

CRTV was born during the time of analogue television – when almost all production was done manually. As such, it took lots of time to produce reports. But today, we live in the digital age, the age of automation and the nation’s news flag bearer cannot still be seen lagging behind any longer.

When CRTV was first created, the English speaking population of the country was said to be only 4million. Today, the last population census conducted in 2011 puts it at 10million. Why can’t CRTV create a whole new channel dedicated to speakers of English in the country? We think statistics and time support it.

Same argument can be made about Cameroon Tribune. It used to be Cameroon Tribune French and English, – separate editions. But the economic crunch of the early 90s saw the fusing of both editions into one.

Then also, there were only 4million speakers of English in the country, evenso, they were able to sustain an English edition and a French edition of the paper. Now that that population group has grown to over 10million, why shouldn’t Cameroon Tribune resume its English edition?

CRTV and Cameroon Tribune will actually gain more relevance and advertisement revenue and be able to compete more with the emerging private channels should they consider these suggestions.

At the least, if it cannot be done at the national level, empower the Regions like in Nigeria where every state has a local NTA affiliate channel that caters for community news or coverage to build local TV channels.

However, separate English and French national channels should be considered as priorities – such an arrangement will leave both channels with the capability to engage in extensive and meaningful coverage than what obtains today.