Cable 31

NAME:
EZIKEIHEOMA JUDITH CHIDIMMA
MATRIC:
134072032
DEPT:MASS COMMUNICATION
LEVEL:
HND I
COURSE:
INTERNATIONAL COMMUNICATIONS AND WORLD PRESS

(MAC 342)
PROLIFERATION OF CABLE TV IN NIGERIA AS AN INDICATION THAT

NIGERIANS ARE MORE EXPOSED TO NEWS ACROSS THE BORDERS AND ITS
SUBSEQUENT EFFECTS. DISCUSS
Introduction
Satellite and cable television availability has increased dramatically. The number of people with
satellite access increased from just 270,000 in 1991 to 1 million by 2005. Further, these numbers
are likely to understate the change in the number of people for whom television is available,
since a single television is often watched by many.
Todays television broadcasting system, severely limited by radio spectrum constraints on the
number of channels available at any one geographical location, has grown largely on the basis of
mass entertainment programming. But cable television, with its many channels and the
possibility of two-way transmission, has promised to provide a television of abundance with
potentially dramatic social impact.
Many new cable television services have been discussed: locally originated news and public
affairs aimed at small audiences unserved by todays mass entertainment television medium;
direct polling of viewers for their instantaneous responses about important issues; instructional
programs for external degree, vocational, and other course work; information storage and
retrieval for institutions such as hospitals and government facilities; and commercially oriented
applications such as utility meter reading and burglar alarm systems.
The use of cable today, however, stands in stark contrast to this potential. Its service consists
almost entirely of rebroadcasting local television broadcast signals, plus carrying signals from
several distant broadcasting stations and, more recently, offering special pay television channels
for movies and sports. Although numerous cable systems do cover local public affairs (mostly
talk shows), local sports events such as high school football, and other activities of community
interest, it is fair to say that the overall social impact of cable has been nil. We are indeed
witnessing a television of abundance, but the abundance is almost entirely composed of more of
the same movies, more sports, and more of other mass entertainment. Cable remains almost
entirely dependent on the broadcasting industry for programs; consequently, what it has to offer
is essentially a mirror image, but with more mirrors, of what television stations already provide.
Effects of Cable TV
Several studies have demonstrated that the information and exposure provided by television can
influence a wide range of attitudes and behavior. Beyond providing entertainment, television
vastly increases both the availability of information about the outside world and exposure to
other ways of life. This is especially true for remote, rural villages, where several ethnographic
and anthropological studies have suggested that television is the primary channel through which
households get information about life outside their village (Mankekar 1993, 1998; Fernandes
2000; Johnson 2001; Scrase 2002). Most popular cable programming features urban settings
where lifestyles differ in prominent and salient ways from those in rural areas. For example,
many characters on popular soap operas have more education, marry later and have smaller
families, all things rarely found in rural areas; and many female characters work outside the
home, sometimes as professionals, running businesses or in other positions of authority.
Anthropological accounts suggest that the growth of TV in rural areas has had large effects on a
wide range of day-to-day lifestyle behaviors, including latrine building and fan usage (Johnson
2001). Yet there have been few rigorous empirical studies of the impacts this dramatic expansion
in cable access may have had on social and demographic outcomes.
Television has profound effect on public opinion, ones view of the world, and ones place in it.
That the home television set is lit on the average of six hours a day is an awesome fact. But this
does not mean that merely easing the constraint on channel capacity will permit cable to easily
satisfy additional social needs noted above. In assessing the potential of television for new
services, whether by cable or other means, one must carefully examine public needs ithoz4t
confusing these needs with the fact that television as a medium? Cable TV is a powerful force in
the society
Consider, for example, news and public affairs aimed at small audiences that today are not well
served by conventional broadcasting. In exploring the possibilities for cable applications, one
must consider the alternative ways that these needs can be, or are being, met. The fact that these
particular groups are not being served by todays television is not a sufficient basis to conclude
that they are not being well served. Suburban newspapers, which have enjoyed substantial
growth in recent years, provide a news and public affairs outlet to small communities. Journals
and papers concentrate on the interests of other groups with a wide variety of professional,
avocational, cultural, and ethnic interests. Local meetings cover many different activities
including church, government, and schoolto satisfy yet other needs.
Moreover, one must take into account the inherent characteristics of alternative media. Television
has the advantage of moving pictures that provide the viewer with a tremendous information
flow: facial expression, dynamic moving sequences, audiovisual displays, and other elements
that make the medium particularly attractive for certain applications. But for many purposes,
much of this information flow is irrelevant. Or to put it another way, one must watch television
on a fixed schedule to glean whatever information is relevant. Although lacking the visual
content, newspapers and other print media do permit the reader to skim at his convenience large
quantities of information, to pick out only those parts that are relevant and to store information
for later reuse, and to do this cheaply.
For these reasons, services aimed at small audiences have not developed into a major selling
point for cable television. Virtually the whole thrust of cable operators marketing activities has
been in improving the quality of reception from local broadcasting stations; increasing
programming choice by bringing in distant signals; and introducing special pay channels for
movies and sports.
Conclusion
Cable TV is associated with increases in school enrollment, perhaps itself an indicator of
increased status and decision-making authority within the household. However, one plausible
mechanism is that television exposes rural households to urban lifestyles, values and behaviors
that are radically different than their own and that households begin to adopt or emulate some of
these, as suggested by many anthropological and ethnographic studies of television (Fernandes
2000; Johnson 2001). Certainly, the differences between rural and urban setting are marked.
The possibility that changes in norms, values or attitudes lay behind these results is particularly
intriguing as a contrast to typically proposed approaches to improving education and women's
status or reducing fertility. For example, for education, the emphasis is often on reducing
poverty, cutting school fees, building schools and improving school and teacher quality. For
fertility, the emphasis is often on factors such as expanding access to family planning goods and
services. And efforts to promote women's status are often vague, such as calls to empower
women." In many of these cases, the solutions (such as reducing poverty) are as difficult to
accomplish as the problems they are attempting to solve, and potentially can only be achieved
over a long time period and with significant resources. Since adding cable television caused none
of these intermediate steps such as reducing poverty or cutting school fees, it is arguably the case
that some component of these problems is the result of norms and attitudes. While these other
strategies are worthwhile, both in themselves and as solutions to the problems of education,
fertility and women's status, and while cable clearly cannot solve any part of these problems that
is in fact related to underlying structural problems such as poverty, the possibility that some of
these behaviors may be changed largely due to changes in attitudes, cheaply and quickly supplied
by TV.
References
Blain, C. and Meeds, R. (2004) Effects of Television News Crawls on Viewers
Memory for
Audio Information in Newscasts. Working paper. Kansas State University.

Brader, T. (2006). Campaigning for Hearts and Minds. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Brinkley, J (19970. Defining Vision. New York: Harcourt Brace.
Brown, Rich. 1996. Turner adds ticker to satisfy viewers. Broadcasting & Cable 126 (33): 65
Buckingham, David. 1999. Young People, Politics and News Media: beyond political
socialisation. Oxford Review of Education 25: 171-184.
Chaffee, S. and Franks, S. 1996. How Americans get political information. Annals of the
American
Academy of Political and Social Science 546: 48-58.
Mutz, Diana C. 1998. Impersonal Influence. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Negroponte, Nicholas. 1995. Being Digital. New York: Knopf.
Ray, M. Rilden. 1999. Technological Change and Associational Life, in Civic Engagement in
American Democracy, Skocpol, T. and Fiorina, M.P., eds.: 297-329. Washington, D.C.:
Brookings Institution Press.
Romano, Allison. 2002. Ticker embedded in news. Broadcasting & Cable 132 (31): 26.
Rosen, Jay. 1991. Glitz! Visuals! Action! The Whole World is Watching CNN. The Nation 252
(18): 622-623.

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NAME:

EZIKEIHEOMA JUDITH CHIDIMMA

INTERNATIONAL COMMUNICATIONS AND WORLD PRESS

PROLIFERATION OF CABLE TV IN NIGERIA AS AN INDICATION THAT

Audio Information in Newscasts. Working paper. Kansas State University.

Academy of Political and Social Science 546: 48-58.

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