A workshop to validate a diagnostic of Cameroon’s audiovisual began on Thursday.

Members of the National Committee for the supervision of Cameroon’s Digital Broadcasting, Switchover (CAM-DBS) and other stakeholders working in the audio-visual landscape began brainstorming yesterday February 23 in Yaounde on different aspects that will be taken into consideration as Cameroon migrates from the analogy format of broadcasting to the digital type. While opening the workshop, the coordinator of CAM-DBS, François Wakata said the digital television transition is the process in which analog television broadcasting is converted to and replaced by digital television. This primarily involves both TV stations and over-the-air viewers. However, it also involves content providers like TV networks and cable television conversion to digital cable.

Wakata said they are working with experts whose countries have already moved from the analogy format to digital broadcasting so as to learn from their experiences which will help Cameroon understand what it takes in terms of finance, infrastructure and equipment amongst other things to be able to move to the digital format. With the digital broadcasting format, Cameroonians will enjoy better sound and image quality over their radio and TV sets.

Reports indicate that the audio-visual landscape in Cameroon have infrastructural problems, media programmes and content are poor in terms of quality and quantity, programmes as well as the lack of media ethics and finances. The assistant coordinator of CAM-DBS, Mezom Melouta said when the broadcasting transition will finally take place; there will be a high demand of quality programmes reason why there is need to tackle such problems now before June 2015 which is the deadline for Cameroon to completely moves from analogy to digital broadcasting format.