MONROVIA – In the afternoon of Monday, December 10, 2018, the images of persons on a giant screen overlooking the fence of the Liberia Broadcasting System (LBS) were ‘sticky’ (breaking in motion): move…stop…move..stop..move…
Report by Samuel G. Dweh/freelance journalist ((+231) 886-618-906/776-583-266; [email protected])
Similar thing was happening to the voice of a male presenter on the screen.
“This has been a trademark problem for this government’s TV/Radio station, which resumed normal operations in 2007, during Madam Ellen Sirleaf’s presidency,” one of many Liberians watching the program on the screen said to no particular person in the group of viewers.
“The poor visual and audio qualities is probably being caused by defect of a memory stick on which the station’s people save a video-recorded program before it is played through the production machine in the production room before it is played for the public’s viewing,” another watcher responded to the first speaker’s complaint.
“Condition of the visual/audio quality of LBS facility has improved a bit nowadays, since the Chinese people became repair works on the entire facility few years ago,” another viewer said.
In a tiny room few yards from an assembly of white ground-level satellite dishes, a long tower and three white signal reception and relay boots, two Chinese and one Liberian engineers were explaining to journalists on the conditions of the general signal reception and relay equipment of the state-owned Radio/Television facility.
“Liberia is still using Analogue technology to broadcast, which is less-useful in this modern age. The government does not have money now for digital migration,” said Mr. James O. Williams, Deputy Chief Engineer at LBS, working with the Chinese engineers working on the facility. He had been trained in China.
He said taking the LBS from the Analogue stage to a digital one would cost around US52m, but only US10m has come through the government.
“The first amount, USD52m, was what a Chinese engineer Company, called STAR, demanded to do the digital migration. The USD10m was a donation from the Chinese government, following President Weah’s meeting with his Chinese counterpart at the FOCAC (Forum on China-Africa Cooperation) in September of this year,” the Liberian engineer recalled.
The LBS repair, and maintenance, work is under general Chinese project titled “China-Aided LBS Technical Cooperation Project”, and is being implemented by a Chinese company called China Broadcast Technical Group Corporation (CBTGC)
A state-owned CBTGC started the LBS project in 2007, Mr. Zhang Mingxin, Project Manager, said to journalists at the CBTGC’s head office, in the LBS compound in Paynesville, on December 10, 2018.
He traced the contract signing during the presidential time of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and Hu Jingtao.
“When we came, everything damaged: no doors, no ceiling, no cables…no everything,” he said in a heavily loaded Chinese accent.
A couple of years, the station started breathing again—but on an ‘old school’ equipment called Analogue.
With a central control point in Monrovia, LBS now has relay stations in six other Counties—Bomi, Lofa, Grand Bassa, Maryland, Margibi, and Grand Gedeh—out of fifteen political sub-divisions of Liberia.
But taking equipment to each County was tortuous for the Chinese engineers sent.
“Holes or mud on roads, they damaged some of our vehicles. We spent 14 days. No electricity. No place to sleep. No water,” Mr. Mingxing enumerated some of the hurdles experienced.
On tour of the facilities, this writer noticed only one of the three signal relay rooms appeared ‘new’.
“That one, in the center, looks new, according to your observation, because it is the station responsible for receiving signals from the other two stations and relaying it to sub-stations in other Counties,” Mr. Deign Saygbe, a technician assigned with all three stations, responded to the remark. “It performs a technical function called de-modulation, which is changing electronic magnetic waves into magnetic waves,” added Deign, one of five Liberians trained in Basic Techniques of Radio/Television Broadcast for four months in China in 2014.
Before the Chinese engineer team return to their Country, after their contract has ended, they will train Liberians in technical repair and maintenance of the LBS signal reception and relay facility, the Manager of the Project disclosed.