PART A: MANAGEMENT
The organization and management of government-owned radio stations in Nigeria are rooted in the usual government structure. The management is bureaucratized, personnel sourcing inelastic and many administrative overheads amount to waste. Funding is heavily dependent on government allocation, supplemented with revenue from commercials.
The private stations, being profit-oriented, have smaller outfits, fewer staff and simpler management structures.
Community radio is emerging in Nigeria at a time of unprecedented changes in political, economic and technological changes. To establish itself as a viable sub-sector, it cannot afford the management profile of its predecessors. It must come with, among other things, a unique kind of dynamism partly defined by management cultures characterized by a thorough understanding of CR as simultaneously a social professional service and a business concern, a deployment of leadership and professional skills suitable for change and innovation management, and a balancing of variables like resource mobilization, manpower sourcing and development as well as editorial independence to achieve organizational goals.
PART A: GENDER
The mass media, as a strong cultural institution, are known to have a significant impact on the social construction of gender. Concerns of media promotion of gender - power imbalance have resonated and generated a list of its various dimensions. In policy, structure, procedure and orientation, mainstream media have largely been patriarchal: male centred, male-dominated and male-controlled.
Women have continued to experience barriers in accessing information and actively participating in the processes of mainstream radio. They have had limited opportunity to shape information, influence and determine media agenda and project themselves and issues that relate to them realistically.
Though they constitute a major section of any community, they have been “invisible” in the mainstream media.
Programming and programme contents have-largely been the exclusive preserve of men. Media continue to allow and use sexist language that is generally discriminating and designed to put women in a subservient position. Limited numbers of women make it to decision-making levels where policies guiding the media are determined.
Media content has continued to be monotonously stereotypic in its portrayal of women: as passive and dependent, weak and inefficient; only fit for household chores, etc. A democratic and development - oriented medium like CR must be in term with the great potentials of gender in broadening the diversity in its culture of participation.
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