Global Drums and Local Masquerades

TV broadcasting has been in Nigeria for more than 50 years(1959-2009). Its development has brought about a series of local responses to globalsocioeconomic and political environments and “soft” stimuli. This conclusion is based ona critical, interpretive reading of the history, form, and content of television inNigeria from Obafemi Awolowo’s Western Nigeria Television in Ibadan through the federalgovernment’s reactive establishment of the national network: the Nigeria TelevisionAuthority, and later, states and private television stations. The ultimate deregulationof television broadcasting in 1992, perceived as Babangida’s “politically-correct”reaction to the pressures from the Bretton Woods institutions, opened up national mediamarkets for global penetration, and fast-tracked media globalization and its effects inNigeria. While television stations in Nigeria have multiplied in numerical terms,programming/content/form have followed the global market/technological determinismturning Nigerian TV into localized versions of commercialized western master-scriptswith very little local ideological direction