- OSA SUNNY ADUN Recounts His Story To City People
- Reveals How He Has Produced Over 200 Broadcasters
Osa Sunny Adun is the founder of DBN TV, one of the pioneer private broadcasting TV stations in Nigeria. He and a few others were given TV licences during the IBB’s era to go into private broadcasting. Many of those who got the licence did not run the project. This tall and handsome media entrepreneur is making a success running the long distance race.
In the last 30 years, DBN has gone through the mill, with all the vagaries of uncertainties dogging the economy, but Osa has remained very focused and he is right now ready to relaunch and reband the station for the new digital TV broadcasting now the vogue in the sector.
In the last 30 years, he has also produced so many broadcasters who have gone on to occupy key positions in the country today. Many of them are corporate affairs managers of banks, and blue-chip companies.
They also head the corporate affairs units of top government parastatals. Many of them came together to give him a befitting 60th birthday a few weeks ago.
Yours truly, is one of them, a fortnight ago, I met Osa for an interview over lunch at Ikoyi Club during which he revealed how he went into broadcasting and set up DBN.
How did broadcasting start for you?
I studied in the US. I left for the US after my primary and secondary school education in Nigeria. I left for the US at the age of 19. This was in mid 70’s.
You won’t believe this. I actually left to go and study Pharmacy because my elder brother who was already in the States was a Pharmacist, so naturally I wanted to do that. But I have always had this feeling and this urge to make a possitive impact on my environment, I loved, I still do, the media and I believe this will give me a wider reach to people and the environment.
As I was in America, I also realised the impact the media were making in the USA and the kind of changes you can effect in society using the media.
So after one year in Pharmacy school, I then switched to Mass Communication and Journalism. Thsoe were really the motivating factors. When I was in the United States then, the idea of Afrocentricism was in the air. We had to make our English name our middle name. Instead of Sunny it became Osa Sunny Adun. While I was in school, I was making some contributions, by way of sending articles to some newspapers in Nigeria, such as Concord, Daily Times and magazine, Africa Now in London. About the time I was finishing school in the States was the time the Olympics was been organised and Los Angeles had been awarded the rights to to play host to the 1984 Games.
As part of the role I was already playing in my freelancing writing business, I had approached them that I wanted accreditation to report the games. One thing led to the other. I discovered that the TV rights was still available for Africa. So instead of just going to secure accreditation, just a badge to enable me report, I saw myself sitting across the table with the Olympic organisers-the International Olympics Committee executives. By that I mean the President, the Secretary General, discussing and negotiating acquisition of TV right to cover the 1984 Games. That was the proposal I had with me when I flew back to Africa and Nigeria having been away for 13 years. I came through Darker, Senegal I met with the group in charge of continental broadcasting then. They are now African Broadcasting Union. Of course, they didn’t quite understand the concept I was talking about. I ended up coming to Nigeria and I hooked up with the NTA.
What was the concept?
The concept I came up with was that we wanted to cover and relay the Olympic games from an African perspective. focusing on African Athletes, African participation, for the games, unlike the past when we depended on foreign media.
That was really the beginning of Afrocentricism. We needed to focus on our own. We did just that and it was successful. Back in 1984 that was a novelty. It had never been done ever before. More than 100 million viewers were able to follow the games from an African perspective. We were not just a footnote at the games like before.
How old were you then?
About 26. I was quite young. But we did that very successfully. After that NTA engaged us. We consulted for NTA from 1984 to 1987. About this time, I have been advocating the private participation in broadcasting. Even when I first registered DBN, I could not use the word broadcasting because it was against the law of the land then. Private individuals were not allowed to operate a broadcasting company, not to talk of a broadcasting network. Thankfully, the Babangida administration deregulated in 1992 and by 1992/93, the first set of licences were issued and the DBN was one of the licences and we started our station in 1995. We were able to engage and empower many people.
My focus then and now was to try and empower the youth. My company then was full of young people. We wanted the young people to have their sense of belonging I am happy that with the advert of private broadcasting, amany people and stations have gone into it. A lot of young people were employed and economic growth was happening.
It is not surprising that we are also making the transition now to digital switch over. We are happy that we have contributed much to private broadcasting over the years, I can conveniently say that no fewer than 200 to 250 persons have passed through the DBN school as we call it.
How did you feel the 1st time you heard the news? Were you expecting it?
No. We were not expecting it at all. We were surprised because it came during the military era. We never expected that the Military would allow the deregulation of braodcasting. We were lucky. Interestingly, the late Admiral Augustus Aikhomu was the one who told me we had made it. He was visiting Benin and I was one of the leaders, of throught who joined the Governor to receive him. When he came down from the plane at the airport, he shook hands with all of us who had lined up to welcome him. When he got to me, he tapped on my shoulders said congratulations you have been given a licence. That was how I first heard about it. It felt like an Olympic Gold Medal had been hang on my neck. You can imagine. It was very overwhelming.
What kind of station did you plan DBN TV to be?
The big challenge was that in the next 6 months we had to assembly individuals who had never, I respect, who had never had anything to do with Broadcasting.
Why?
As there was only one truly national broadcaster which was NTA. And there was a handfull of state broadcasters. So the employment pool to choose from was minimal and restrictive. So, we needed to create employees, we needed to create our own philosophy, our own model, house style. We had to start from the beginning.
What was the vision behind DBN TV at that time?
We had a bias for Sports naturally because I had been involved with Sports before then. So, we wanted to go into Sports Broadcasting. But there were certain restrictions again, content wise. It still exists. But it has been relaxed. It says 60% of your content must be locally sourced. No problem. But the interpretation of that regulation is that you must source 60% locally. In other words everything about that content must be locally and it was not possible.
Why is this so?
Because the Sports Administration and Sports Organisations even till today is rarely nothing to write home about. We also tried to do Entertainment. That is why we came up with programmes such as Night Shift, different shows such as Music Africana.
We were the first to pioneer AM Broadcasting on a daily basis. So what you know as AM broadcasting today was foundation laid by DBN. The likes of Segun Adebowale, Lanre Anjola, Israel Edjare, Claire Onuorah who is now the anchor of Good Morning Nigeria on NTA network, people such as Seye Kehinde have contributed to what DBN was and is today.
We had a vision, to answer your question. Our vision was we are going to be one, a Sports Channel, and two, an Entertainment Channel. And that vision has not changed since. We call it Sportstainment. We gave all the regulatory guidelines but told them to go and do their thing. We didn’t want anybody to be constraint. We wanted them to express themselves. That has always been the philosophy and the vision.
How challenging has it been sustaining the DBN dream?
It has not been easy trying to conduct business in a place and environment that does not quite have a set out policy. You have policy sommersaults everytime with the new players, new managers, new leaders. As the political leaders change, so the policies changes and this affects your business. You are not able to have a long term plan for your business because there is always one challenge or the other. Of course, the support system is not also there. The financial sector does not really believe in broadcasting. The economy itself is a trading one. It does not promote manufacturing ideas. The mindset is shorternism. You don’t think of long term. These are all the challenges you have to confront.
Having said all these we would continue to adjust our business model and re-invent yourself such that you will be able to be relevant because if you don’t do that you will soon find out that you would no logner be relevant.
Were there times you felt like quitting?
Of course! Oh yes! Those are times when things get very frustrating. The business of broadcasting requires long term investment, but the only capital available to you are very short -term capital. So, you have to depend on private borrowings and savings from families. On top of this, people will also be asking you why can’t you be like some of these foreign channels. So, there is a twin frustration. The first frustration is you just getting in there. The second frustration is that people whom you are doing it for, you wish they know how the level of your effort.
And the 3rd frustration is that even the regulators are not making things easy for you. They come up with all manner of regulations I am happy that things are changing now. For instance, part of the problem is that we never enjoyed pioneer status. There was no Tax break. There was no absence of Customs tariff. When the Telecoms people came in they enjoyed some tax break and pioneer status. There was nothing like that for us. The next challenge before us now is the challenge of digital switch over.
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