WHEN the ongoing digitisation process is complete, Zimbabwe will have 12 broadcasting channels which are expected to operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
This dramatic increase in channels means that vast quantities of broadcast content will be required to keep these channels operating.
In light of these welcome technological developments, we have to make a number of decisions in regard to where and how we get broadcast material that will be required in huge quantities which can only be described as ‘extra-ordinarily voluminous’!
One option is to buy unprecedented quantities of foreign broadcast content from outside the country and rely on it to keep our channels functioning.
This has been done before by ZBC, but this time the sheer volumes of such foreign content will have to be so huge that it covers 97 768 of broadcast hours per year, that is, if we are to keep all the 12 channels functioning!
The foreign content option is any easy one, a tempting one and a lazy one at that, especially for some of us who consider that all things foreign are better than whatever happens to be local!
However, this option, apart from infringing upon some legal requirements stipulated in the Broadcasting Services Act, is not a good one for a number of reasons:
l The sheer volume of foreign content that would have to be imported would cost vast amounts of foreign currency which the country cannot afford.
l Spending huge amounts of money to purchase foreign content means that Zimbabwe will be creating hundreds of thousands of jobs in those foreign countries able to supply that foreign content to us but this would be at the expense of our people, especially the youths, who desperately need jobs!
In other words, Zimbabwe would be exporting jobs instead of creating those jobs at home for ourselves.
This is why this option is not good for us in so-far-as it reduces us to mere consumers and not producers of products created by others.
l Foreign content by its very nature is a carrier of foreign cultural norms and values which are likely to impact on how our people, especially the youths, view themselves and the world at large.
Already the foreign content that is accessible from our television screens, from various electronic platforms which include internet and cell-phones, is making some of us complete strangers to each other and to ourselves as well!
This is not to say that all foreign content is not good for us.
All one is saying is that we should, as a matter of priority, define ourselves first and foremost and understand our situation in its historical, social and cultural context.
This process of self apprehension and self-definition as a nation is what goes on to constitute a Zimbabwean identity and sensibility or a Zimbabwean perspective and or a Zimbabwean point of view.
And the good thing is that broadcasting in general can do a lot for us in this regard!
Put differently, one can argue that as a people we need to relate to what is foreign from our own point of view as Zimbabweans and as Africans.
And it is this point of view, this identity, which will be obliterated on a massive scale if foreign content becomes the mainstay of our broadcasting system!
Already there are tell-tale signs scattered all over the place suggesting that all is not well partly as a result of the foreign content which bombards us on a daily basis right from our childhood days!
We see people who do not believe in themselves, who know more about the outside world than they do about their country, parents who bring up their children who turn out to be complete strangers to them!
We also come across people who hate themselves so much that they regard all things local as being automatically inferior.
The list of signs which indicate lack of self-confidence goes on and on!
It will be a tragic story if Zimbabweans were to invest heavily in a foreign content procurement process which has the unintended consequence of undermining their belief in themselves and in their nation!
More tragic even would be the fact that Zimbabweans would have spent nearly US$200 million to install digital compliant infrastructure which ends up being used, unwittingly, to undercut their own sense of nationhood!
The other option which is better, demands that we look at the challenge of producing local broadcast content as a godsend, or a unique opportunity to create tens of thousands of jobs in the country.
In the process of doing so we are bound to establish a viable film and television industry whose production values can compete with those of products which emanate from the larger outside world.
There is no doubt that this job-creation approach, this do-it-yourself and get it right approach is the one that the Ministry of Information, Media and Broadcasting Services has adopted.
Why?
Because it is a logical approach and deliberately designed to address some of the issues related to the self and to national identity issues; it is also related to economic productivity which apart from generating economic value ends up generating and consolidating self-confidence and self-belief.
It is an approach that is bound to empower people, especially when within a short space of time people discover that they have the energy and creativity to produce good quality local content for their information, entertainment and education.
More significantly the huge demand for good local content will, inevitably, trigger a massive job creation process at a scale and scope that has never been witnessed before in the film and television sector of Zimbabwe!
And we all know that the creation of jobs is an integral aspect of the Zimbabwe Agenda for Sustainable Socio-Economic Transformation (Zim-ASSET).
Of particular interest to all of us is that film and television programmes by their very nature, feed from and get promoted by other disciplines and cultural related activities such as music, traditional dances, fashion and fabrics, architecture, literature etc.
For instance, we know that one of the dominant characteristics of Bollywood, and to some extent, Nollywood films is music.
And we all know that music is used in film productions for a variety of reasons which include setting the general mood/tone of a film or scene, for emphasis of a particular meaning or moment, or for dramatising specific actions or developments as they unfold.
What this means is that widespread film and television productions in Zimbabwe are likely to stimulate more creativity in other cultural-cum economic areas!
A good example here is the way the demand for wardrobe-related outfits and accessories to be put on by actors during film and television productions stimulate garment production, fashion and fabrics etc.