By Ediri Ejoh

Media professionals in the country have blamed low revenue in the media and entertainment industry to inconsistent government policies.

Speaking during the KPMG Alumni cocktail ceremony in Lagos, Managing Director/CEO, Ebony Life Television, Mo Abudu, noted that in 2013, Nigeria’s media and entertainment industry generated $4 billion, while South Africa’s generated over $12 billion.

According to her, in 2018, Nigeria’s projected revenue went down to $1 billion, while South Africa’s went up to $19.7 billion.

She, however, noted that in 2018, the revenue projection for TV advertising in Nigeria rounded up to 16.1 percent, while that of South Africa was 10.2 percent.

Abudu added that infrastructure challenges and understanding of the sector by major players in the economy had continued to bite harder on the development of media in the country.

According to her, there is need for government to address these issues, which had been lingering in the industry.

However, to move forward, she noted that the delivery of quality content, building revenue base, improving funding opportunities for media companies in Africa and the development of strong talent base across the continent was the strength to upholding the media and entertainment industry in Africa.

Also speaking, chairman/CEO, Channels Television, Mr. John Momoh, noted that Africa’s content production and analogue media landscape was grossly underdeveloped and would require significant capital injection to realize its full potential.

He said: “There are100 million television households across Sub-Saharan Africa, with the potential to increase to 300 million television households by 2025.

“There is however, a dearth of engaging African entertainment content, which would drive growth. Telcos need quality African produced digital content to drive the irrespective ARPUs and data revenues.

“Consequently, asynergy that ensues in the translation of the current media landscape in to a lucrative digital content publishing industry is well within reach.”

On technology development, Momoh noted that the demand for digital signal convertors (set top boxes) was very high.

“Altogether, commencing in 2015, over 85 million boxes will be required as African television households switch from analogue to digital television.

“It is estimated that there could be more than 600M WCDMA/HSPA handheld devices in Sub-Saharan Africa by 2019,”he said.

He further stated that multi screen viewing would soon become a reality in sub-Saharan Africa, adding that most telcos had already established strong and lasting relationships with the various technology service providers that would be needed to support the media.”