Media, marketing receive boost as FG inaugurates task team on audience measurement

In a fresh attempt to give more credence to Nigerian media and marketing space, the Federal Government has inaugurated an 8-man task team on audience measurement.

Audience measurement measures how many people are in the audience, usually in relation to radio listenership and television viewership, but also in relation to newspaper and magazine readership and increasingly, web traffic on websites.

Inaugurating the task team virtually in Abuja recently, the Minister of Information & Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed said the initiative marks the birth of a new dawn in the nation’s broadcast industry, noting that the drive for the Digital Switch-Over (DSO) of the Television from analogue is now well underway.

His words: “With this task team, we are today heralding a new dawn in our broadcast industry. The Digital Switch Over (DSO) of our television from analogue is now well under-way, and we are set to announce a new accelerated agenda, in order to ensure that the DSO becomes a veritable tool to help lift the creative industry out of crippling effect of Covid-19.”

Members of the 8-man task team are: Alhaji Bello Garba Kankarofi, Former Chief Executive Officer and Registrar of Advertising Practitioners Council of Nigeria (APCON), who will serve as Chairman of the Committee. Others are Mr. Obi Asika, Founder and Chairman of Dragon Africa; Hajia Sa’aa Ibrahim, President, Broadcasting Organisation of Nigeria (BON); Mr. Mahmoud Ali-Balogun, Chief Executive Officer of BrickHouse Media and Mrs. Pauline Ehusani, Assistant Director, Monitoring at National Broadcasting Commission. Other members of the team are Mr. Tolu Ogunkoya, Group Chief Executive Officer of Media Reach and Past President of Media Independent Association of Nigeria (MIPAN) and Joe Mutah, a Media Practitioner with the Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria who will serve as the committee’s secretary and lately, Mrs. Ijedi Iyoha, Acting Registrar and Chief Executive Officer of APCON.

The Honourable Minister, who expressed delight at the caliber of men appointed for the task disclosed that overtime, audience measurement has been the missing link in the entire ecosystem.

Nonetheless, he pointed out that with the present efforts, audience measurement will make the nation’s Digital Switch Over sustainable for signal distributors, channel owners, Y+TV content producers and Advertisers.

However, Alhaji Mohammed said: “Without it, we will not see the growth in our television and the value creation in the creative industry that the economy and people of Nigeria so need.

“We need an objective and scientific Audience measurement system that articulates the value of the content to consumers, as well as the value of the audience to advertisers, particularly in the television sector.”

“The absence of a world-class measurement regime has resulted in under-investment in the sector, which is necessary to foster the growth of the industry, as the advertising community continues to rely on subjective factors when making decisions on the content they want, as opposed to how many viewers the content truly attracts”, the Minister said.