Various media houses have approached the Communications Regulatory Authority of Namibia (CRAN) to apply for commercial broadcasting licenses, in an attempt to stay alive and relevant in the ever-changing industry that has seen most media houses close shop in the face of the ruthless COVID-19 pandemic.
Five companies were publicly announced by CRAN in the Government Gazette in April this year, to have applied for broadcasting licenses with the regulatory body.
Three of the five companies applied for commercial licenses while the other two applied for community licenses to be granted permission to broadcast within the Windhoek geographical area.
Amongst them is Free Press of Namibia (Pty) Ltd, a company that owns one of Namibia’s daily newspapers, The Namibian, and the Namibian Media Academy, a subsidiary of Namibia Media Holdings (NMH), the mother company of Namibian Sun.
Free Press of Namibia applied for a Commercial Broadcasting Services License under two frequencies -95.3 or 106.6 MegaHertz (MHz) under consideration to transmit at 500 Watts while Namibian Media Academy also applied for the same frequencies at 500 Watts.
“Because of the changing nature of the media industry, we have been put in a position to operate on multiple platforms … We are already running shows, streaming programmes on Facebook. We believe that some of these things are very close and similar to broadcasting,” said Editor of The Namibian, Tangeni Amupadhi.
Amupadhi told Nampa on Wednesday that some of the reasons why mainstream media have jumped on the social media bandwagon are to cover the income base of the organisations and deliver news to their audiences effectively during the pandemic.
The veteran journalist added that in order to cover the newspaper’s income base from erosion while also reaching a wider audience, they want to operate on the different platforms that are already available, thus the need for the application of the broadcasting license.
“People now consume news in different formats and with the emergence of digital radio that has taken off, we want to be able to do that without running fault with the country’s regulations,” said Amupadhi.
NMH Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Albe Botha confirmed the company’s application with CRAN but could not go into detail, saying he will comment on the way forward once they have received feedback from the regulatory body.
Meanwhile Namibian Sun Editor-in-Chief, Toivo Ndjebela also reverberated Amupadhi’s sentiments, saying they too came to the realisation that news is consumed in a variety of ways. They are moving with the times, he said.
“Print is dying a slow death elsewhere in the world, people are embracing digital ways of dissemination and we would not wait until print is completely dead before we start going digital. We have already started to do that, not that we have any plans to kill our way of doing things but we want to keep up with the global trend of disseminating news,” said Ndjebela.
CRAN’s CEO, Emilia Nghikembua confirmed to Nampa that several applications were received in February and were published for public comments, 14 days after the day of publication.
“No objections were received from the public regarding the applications and the authority has not made a decision yet as the applications are still under consideration. A decision will be communicated on or before 06 August 2021,” said Nghikembua.
Source: Namibia Press Agency
