General News of Friday, 3 September 2021
Source: www.ghanaweb.com
2021-09-03
Director-General of GBC, Professor Amin Alhassan
• GBC spent GH¢17million for public service broadcasting in 2020
•Live transmission of the 2020 presidential election petition wasn’t budgeted for
• Director-General of the media entity says they are transiting from bureaucracy to business
The Ghana Broadcasting Corporation (GBC) spent as much as GH¢17million for public service broadcasting in 2020, its Director-General, Prof. Amin Alhassan has disclosed.
Making this disclosure at the second edition of State Interest and Governance Authority (SIGA)’s media engagement series in Accra on Thursday, Prof Alhassan noted that for the live transmission of the 2020 election petition alone, the station paid $3 for every minute.
According to him, national operations like the poll coverage were tasks that the corporation undertakes but are not paid for.
“I will give you an instance. For some reason, we went to court with a presidential petition. The consensus was that it should be televised live, but nobody asked us how we were going to fund it.
“The Chief Justice invited me for a conversation and told me that I want this live and I looked him in the face and said I would send you an invoice. He said look, I did not budget for this and I said if you did not budget for a presidential petition how can GBC budget for telecasting it live,” Prof. Alhassan disclosed.
“It was unpredictable for us but once they asked us to do it. Every minute you watched the presidential petition live Ghana Broadcasting Corporation was paying $3 to a satellite service provider till the petition was over,” he stressed.
On the subject of profitability in the area of internally generated funds, he said: “We are not declaring profit but if we were to declare profit I will tell you that this is the profit we have declared. The entire several days of the hearing, every minute $3 has been paid by GBC with tax.”
Whiles stressing that the GBC was on transit from bureaucracy to business, challenges remained and they were committed to surmounting same.
“There were many old people who were more comfortable with doing things the analogue way. It was very difficult handling such situations because they have also dedicated all their lives to GBC.”