MARCEL MBAMALU
Channels Television’s latest recognition at the Nigeria Broadcasting Awards has extended its remarkable record in Nigeria’s media industry. The ceremony, held in April, may already have faded from public attention. Yet a closer examination of the station’s record suggests that the award deserves renewed attention.
The broadcaster won Television Station of the Year at the second edition of the Nigeria Broadcasting Awards, organised by the Broadcasting Organisations of Nigeria (BON). The victory followed its success at the maiden edition in 2023, meaning Channels Television has won the award both times it was presented since BON introduced the category.
Join our WhatsApp ChannelThe latest honour is not an isolated achievement. It came after the station had won the Nigerian Media Merit Awards (NMMA) Television Station of the Year a record 16 times. Taken together, these victories have cemented Channels Television’s position as one of Nigeria’s most recognised broadcast organisations.
Its repeated success, however, raises an important question: Is the station’s dominance simply the reward for sustained excellence, or does it reveal deeper questions about competition, industry standards and how broadcasting excellence is measured in Nigeria?
The answer requires acknowledging two realities at the same time. First, Channels Television’s achievement deserves recognition. Sustained excellence in journalism does not happen by chance. It is usually the result of deliberate investment in people, technology, editorial systems and professional culture. Second, when one institution repeatedly occupies the highest position in an industry’s recognition system, it becomes necessary to examine what that pattern says about the wider environment in which other broadcasters operate.
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Founded in 1992 by veteran broadcasters John and Sola Momoh, Channels Television’s rise has been built over decades. The organisation obtained Nigeria’s independent television broadcasting licence in 1993 and began transmission in 1995. Over the years, it expanded from a terrestrial broadcaster into a major news organisation, launching its website in 2000, beginning satellite broadcasting in 2003 and later moving into 24-hour news broadcasting.
These milestones illustrate an important reality about media success: major institutions are rarely created overnight. They are built through years of investment, adaptation and consistency. Channels Television maintains that its recognition reflects sustained commitment to professional journalism, technological advancement and audience trust. Those attributes are also consistent with the qualities that many broadcasting awards claim to reward.
It would, however, be inaccurate to suggest that Channels Television operates in a vacuum. Nigeria’s television industry has become considerably more competitive over the past decade. TVC News has expanded its news operation and was recognised as Best Television Station – News (English Language) at the 2026 Nigeria Broadcasting Awards, while also breaking Channels Television’s long hold on the NMMA Television Station of the Year category in 2025.
Arise News has established itself as a major 24-hour news network with a growing international footprint and has earned recognition for its presenters and political programming. News Central TV has invested in continental news coverage, digital journalism and younger audiences, while Nigerian Television Authority remains the country’s largest terrestrial broadcaster, with unmatched geographical reach and an enduring public-service mandate.
Together, these organisations demonstrate that Nigeria possesses capable broadcasting institutions, each with distinct strengths, editorial priorities and audiences.
Yet capacity alone does not automatically translate into sustained institutional recognition. Awards such as the NMMA and the Nigeria Broadcasting Awards place considerable emphasis on newsroom quality, editorial consistency, innovation, production standards and public impact.
Measured against those benchmarks, Channels Television has repeatedly convinced industry judges that it represents the standard for broadcast journalism. What is beyond dispute is wether excellence in broadcasting is to be determined only by having modern studios or popular presenters, but by the ability to sustain high-quality journalism year after year?
The NMMA, one of Nigeria’s oldest media recognition platforms, was established to promote excellence and integrity in journalism. Since its creation in the early 1990s, the awards have expanded from their initial focus on print journalism to include broadcast categories, including Television Station of the Year.
Within that category, Channels Television has established a record that stands apart, with victories stretching from the early 2000s through recent years. TVC News has emerged as one of the few broadcasters to interrupt that dominance, while no other station has recorded a similar number of wins in the category.
Such a record suggests that, under the standards adopted by the award organisers, Channels Television has consistently produced the quality of journalism, programming and public-interest broadcasting considered worthy of the industry’s highest recognition.
The more important question, however, is why Nigerian broadcasting has struggled to produce more institutions capable of challenging that level of consistency.
The answer may lie less in the awards than in the realities of sustaining quality journalism in Nigeria since broadcast excellence demands sustained investment, skilled journalists, and strong editorial systems. Another issue that warrants closer scrutiny, however, is the transparency of the awards process. Channels Television’s repeated victories may well reflect sustained excellence, but neither the TNBA nor the NMMA provides sufficient public information for broadcasters, researchers or the public to understand what distinguishes the winner or the standards others should aspire to.
For the 2026 BON disclosed that 204 entries were assessed by an Awards Selection Committee chaired by former National Broadcasting Commission Director-General Danladi Bako. However, it did not publish the assessment framework, scoring methodology, the weight assigned to each criterion or judges’ citations explaining why Channels Television emerged as the winner.
The NMMA is slightly more transparent. In 2023, it stated that Television Station of the Year is assessed on compliance with broadcasting regulations, local content, payment of regulatory obligations, programme quality, transmission quality, objectivity, fairness and balance. Even so, it does not disclose how those criteria are weighted or publish judges’ comments.
Some of these indicators relate to administrative compliance, while others speak directly to editorial quality. However, neither award publicly explains how much weight each criterion carries or what distinguishes the eventual winner from other shortlisted broadcasters.
By contrast, many respected journalism and broadcasting awards around the world place significant emphasis on editorial excellence. Common benchmarks include accuracy, originality, investigative reporting, public-interest journalism, ethical standards, innovation, audience impact and the ability to hold powerful institutions to account. Regulatory compliance and operational standards are generally treated as minimum expectations rather than the defining measure of journalistic excellence.
International comparisons suggest that Channels Television’s repeated success is not, by itself, unusual. In the United Kingdom, Sky News dominated the Royal Television Society’s News Channel of the Year award from 2018 to 2025 after BBC News Channel won in 2017. The RTS does not simply reward institutional reputation. It assesses how effectively a broadcaster covered the year’s major events through the quality of reporting, speed of response, depth of context, analytical rigour and overall journalistic performance.
The Philippines presents a similar pattern. ABS-CBN dominated the PMPC Star Awards for Television for much of the period between 2009 and 2020, while GMA Network secured several victories before and after that run. The award recognises the network judged to have delivered the strongest overall programming and broadcast performance during the year, rather than one assessed primarily on regulatory obligations.
These international examples suggest that repeated success by one broadcaster is not uncommon in competitive media markets. The key difference is that such awards are usually tied to clearly defined measures of journalistic and broadcasting performance.
In Nigeria, however, the absence of published scoring frameworks or detailed judges’ citations makes it difficult to determine what the Television Station of the Year award ultimately rewards. Is it primarily compliance with BON and regulatory requirements, or the broadcaster that best serves the public through impactful journalism?
If regulatory compliance forms part of the assessment, which provisions of the Nigeria Broadcasting Code carry the greatest weight, and why?
These questions matter because industry awards do more than celebrate past achievements; they shape future behaviour. A transparent assessment framework would help broadcasters understand the standards the industry values most, encourage greater investment in those areas, strengthen public confidence in the awards and provide a credible benchmark for raising professional standards across Nigerian broadcasting.
Channels Television’s award-winning record should therefore be viewed primarily as a success story. It demonstrates that Nigerian broadcasting institutions can build systems capable of achieving sustained recognition. The station’s investment in journalism, technology and professional standards provides a model that other broadcasters can study.
But the success of one broadcaster should also encourage wider reflection. A healthy media industry is not measured only by the strength of its leading institution. It is measured by how many institutions are capable of competing, innovating and maintaining high standards.
Nigeria’s broadcasting future will depend not only on celebrating excellence when it appears, but on creating an environment where excellence becomes widespread. Channels Television has shown that sustained quality is possible. The challenge for the industry is ensuring that more broadcasters have the capacity to reach that level.
The true measure of Nigeria’s broadcasting excellence is not only how long one broadcaster remains at the top, but how many others are capable of reaching that standard.
Dr. Marcel Mbamalu is a distinguished communication scholar, journalist, and entrepreneur with three decades of experience in the media industry. He holds a Ph.D. in Mass Communication from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, and serves as the publisher of Prime Business Africa, a renowned multimedia news platform catering to Nigeria and Africa's socio-economic needs.
Dr. Mbamalu's journalism career spans over two decades, during which he honed his skills at The Guardian Newspaper, rising to the position of senior editor. Notably, between 2018 and 2023, he collaborated with the World Health Organization (WHO) in Northeast Nigeria, training senior journalists on conflict reporting and health journalism.
Dr. Mbamalu's expertise has earned him international recognition. He was the sole African representative at the 2023 Jefferson Fellowship program, participating in a study tour of the United States and Asia (Japan and Hong Kong) on inclusion, income gaps, and migration issues.
In 2020, he was part of a global media team that covered the United States presidential election.
Dr. Mbamalu has attended prestigious media trainings, including the Bloomberg Financial Journalism Training and the Reuters/AfDB Training on "Effective Coverage of Infrastructural Development in Africa."
As a columnist for The Punch Newspaper, with insightful articles published in other prominent Nigerian dailies, including ThisDay, Leadership, The Sun, and The Guardian, Dr. Mbamalu regularly provides in-depth analysis on socio-political and economic issues.
