The Director of Radio, Ghana Broadcasting Corporation (GBC), Mr. Yaw Owusu-Addo, has blamed policy makers for their inability to put adequate structures in place and ground rules for broadcasting before opening the airwaves for private and commercial broadcasters. This "unfortunate situation", he said, had put GBC, the national broadcaster in an amorphous situation, "and has created a big misconception about public broadcasting and commercial broadcasting".

Speaking to the ADM in an exclusive interview at the weekend, Mr. Owusu-Addo said nowhere on this earth do commercial broadcasters do unlimited broadcasting. "Everywhere in the world apart from the national broadcaster, no one else is allowed to broadcast across the nation - except in Ghana - where the commercial broadcasters may choose to broadcast from here to Walewale", he complained.

He said in the UK and many other places, the commercial broadcaster is not allowed to broadcast beyond a distance of 25 km radius.

Mr. Owusu-Addo opined that a national broadcasting law should have been in place to rectify the anomaly, "as it is very dangerous to allocate a frequency to private broadcasters, including even foreigners, without first setting up ground rules to regulate their activities". The absence of a national broadcasting law in the Ghanaian broadcasting industry, he said, has left it in a confused state "where even commercial broadcasters are challenging to share revenue generated from TV license with the national broadcaster".

This development, Mr. Owusu-Addo said, "is infantile and uniformed" because apart from the Television Licensing Decree that made GBC the collector and user of the revenue, "it is untenable anywhere on this earth that the national broadcaster collects revenue and shares it with commercial broadcasters." He said commercial broadcasters are rather expected to pay a certain percentage of the profits they make to the government towards funding public broadcasting, "so that it does not go out to compete with them in business, since it is not a commercial entity".

On the ongoing arguments that the GBC is capable of funding itself, Mr. Owusu Addo explained that the national broadcaster can create some money to a certain extent, "but can never be able to fund itself". He stated that elsewhere in the world the national broadcaster is fully funded by the state and said it would therefore be unfair for anyone especially policy makers not to speak the truth about how to fund a national broadcaster, "but pretend as if it should be able to fend for itself".

Mr. Owusu-Addo told the ADM that all the money GBC is able to generate from adverts and sponsorships, among others, is used to pay for utilities. "Do you know how much we spend in running 13 radio stations and 41 transmission sites across the nation…If we pay hundreds of millions of cedis in a month just for electricity and about US$186,000 a year for renting a satellite equipment for TV transmission, then where do we get money to do the production of programmes?" he asked.

GBC, Mr. Owusu-Addo said, used to broadcast on an external service to the whole of Africa, "We used to have GBC Radios 1, 2 and 3 on the short-wave. "But over the period we've lost them - simply because the people of this country think the Director of Radio should be able to look for money to run them."

Mr. Owusu-Addo said Ghanaians generally are confused about how to use the national broadcaster. "The politicians are confused and the public as well…If not, why should people stand up and ask why they are being asked to pay TV license fees?" He asked.