"This is Ghana TV"
Excerpt from Du Bois, Shirley Graham. “This is Ghana TV,” The State Publishing Corporation, n.d., pp. 5-25. Box 44, Folder 6. Shirley Graham Du Bois Papers, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA
Excerpted by Carol Stabile and Laura Strait
THE IDEA
Ghana Television will be Ghanaian, African and Socialist in content.
Ghanaian, because, as President Nkrumah said in the speech cited on the title page of this booklet: “Television must assist in the Socialist transformation of Ghana.” Our aim is to produce programmes based on the needs and interests of our people, which lift the level of understanding and broaden horizons, which spur patriotism and engender pride. Television will revive the art of our people, bring scientific laboratories into the classrooms of our pupils, heighten the feeling of unity among the groups that make up our nation.
African, because Africa is a geographical entity with a common experience of oppression and exploitation.
Our television will be a weapon in the struggle for African unity. It will be a weapon in Africa’s fight against imperialism. It will be a weapon in Africa’s fight against imperialism, colonialism and neo-colonialism. It will resurrect forgotten glories of African history, of African culture. We shall attempt to organize a quick exchange of films with other African countries, and eventually have travelling news units all over Africa, disseminating news of Ghana and televising what is happening in our sister states.
Socialist, because our societies have been traditionally socialist and egalitarian, and because we have chosen socialism as the most just and efficient economic system. The socialist outlook will determine our judgment of events not only in Africa, but throughout the world. We shall oppose economic, political or military oppression of any peoples, and support the forces of progress against the forces of reaction.
GETTING TELEVISION TO THE PEOPLE
Television sets are relatively expensive. So how shall we get our television programmes to the people?
For one thing, the Government is interesting itself in seeing to it that the prices of sets are kept as low as possible.
But more importantly, Ghana Television will set up free Television Viewing Centres in the urban centres and remote villages of the country.
Everyone will be able to go to these centres and watch the daily programmes. Because television is essentially visual, its appeal will be immediate and universal. Since relatives few words are necessary for television, the language barrier will be less of a problem.
But we are taking steps to overcome this barrier, too. At the Viewing Centres, monitors who speak the local languages will be in charge. When necessary, these monitors can assume the roles of the traditional Story Tellers, and as the pictures unfold, displaying perhaps some near-forgotten chronicle of West Africa’s history, the monitors will recite the story which is being played out by means of dance, music and pantomime.
In such instances, we shall be combining one of the oldest traditions of Ghana with this newest of scientific inventions.
PROGRAMMING
We went to the people to find out what they needed and wanted from Television.
During the last vacation period, students of the Kwame Nkrumah Ideological Institute and the Institute of Scientific Education at Kwame Nkrumah University made surveys in their home villages and rural areas. With prepared questionnaires in their hands, they gathered information as to:
- The particular needs of their communities.
- How television could best serve these needs.
- Facilities for setting up Television Viewing Centres.
- Availability of electricity.
- School and teaching facilities.
- The basic languages of the communities.
On the basis of their findings and of our own planning, we have decided on the following.
We shall place emphasis on presenting the traditional fine arts--the skills of the wood sculptors, the gold and silver smiths, the potters and the weavers of old.
There will be fashion shows to permit our people to appreciate the beauty of traditional attire and hairstyles.
Established dramatic material is to be placed on TV tape and stored for use when we go into operation. Historical dramas and new plays concerning everyday life are now being rehearsed for presentation--and at the beginning we shall present one of these plays each month, increasing this cadence as the live theatre movement in Ghana grows.
The Cultural Liaison Officer of Ghana Television travels widely, explaining our aims and arousing interest in different groups. In Cape Coast, we discovered an extraordinarily talented family of artists who make puppets. We intend to create a puppet centre in Cape Coast, which will also serve television’s needs. We shall use marionettes to interpret certain folkloric tales, such as Ananse (spider) stories of Ghana. Present plans call for three puppet shows per week, particularly for children.
In music, we shall try to extend the work begun by the School of Music of the Institute of African Studies. We intend to present classical Ghanaian and Western music, and traditional contemporary and popular Ghanaian music and dance.
The Ghana Institute of Art and Culture (GIAC) will mount at least one exhibition of arts and crafts in some part of the country each month. In addition, the GIAC and the University of Ghana Institute of Drama and Dancing are expected to provide some of the artists for our programmes.
The Ministries of Education and Social and Community Development have appointed special officers to work closely with TV. With their cooperation, we are organizing programmes to provide visual aids for teachers in polytechnical training and to open the eyes of students to the wonders of nature.
The Ghana Academy of Sciences will play an important role in supplying material for programmes on science, while the Institute of African Studies will help in the production of broadcasts on African history.
THE POWER OF TELEVISION
Television is the newest, the most powerful, the most direct means of communication devised by man. Its potentialities for good or for evil are boundless. In Britain, forty million persons watch TV news bulletins daily. This exceeds the combined circulation of all daily newspapers in London and the provinces.
The eye of the television camera is more penetrating, more accurate and quicker than the human eye. It can magnify the smallest object and bring it close to the viewer for examination. It can scan the skies and peer into the sea. It can enter the human body and search out disorders of any of the functions.
Through television, a transformation may be brought about in living conditions, in health, in agriculture, in all patterns of work. Television in fishing schooners will search through the waters and facilitate the taking on of loads. Television in factories will bring before the workers technological know-how which will speed up production.
Television will assist the schools in preparing Ghanaian children for service in a dynamic, forward-looking socialist state. The News Department will send reporters into every part of Ghana, and the inhabitants of seldom-visited villages of the interior will know, seeing themselves on the screen themselves on the screen, that they are not forgotten. The eye of the camera will search for talent, for paintings and sculpturing, for singers. And TV will be political. Every television worker must desire and work for Socialism and for the Union Government of Africa.
Such is the power of television. Ghana Television, with its symbol of Ananse and its talking drums proclaiming “Ghana Calls,” will send its beams of light as a unifying force for all Africa.
PROGRAMME DEPARTMENT
Television production has been described as “organized anarchy.” This phrase perhaps better than most, describes the clash of artistic impulses and technological disciplines which are the environment of the Programme Department. The ideas which are the life-springs of all television must be compromised within the strictures of a fixed pictorial format and most of all, time. In television we say, “every night is opening night.”
What sets Ghana Television apart from most of its predecessors is at once a release and a challenge. It is not for the Programme Department of Ghana Television to pursue the capricious gods of “popularity.” For us the words of the President ring crystal clear; our object is to, “serve”, and not to, “sell”. Our twenty and experiences Producers and equal number of Production Assistants, our Writers, Announcers and Artists can concentrate on a single objective; to educate and to edify.
School Telecasts, beginning in our morning schedule with an hour-and-a-half daily, will stress Science and Technology. Geography and English as well will be given priority and consideration. Our hand-in-glove cooperation with the Ministry of Education assures programmes which fit the need and suit the students.
Mass education, literacy training in particular, have longed for the possibilities of a visual medium. Ghana Television has a regular programme scheduled to fulfil this basic need.
Cultural programmes from the rich legacy of African art and folklore will be given the support and dissemination that our new identity demands and a mass communication medium makes possible.