THE ORGANIZATION STRUCTURE OF A TELEVISION STATION By Andrew Bishop Mkandawire (AB Deevado)-MC Yr 4 4th May, 2012 Share World Open University-BT Campus

Every organization has to have an organization chart that shows the relationships between individuals, who is in charge, who has authority to make decisions, who carry out decisions, how information is communicated, how the positions are coordinate, etc.

(Hall et al 1997: 448) discuss that organization charts illustrate the structure of the business. The structure of the business allows: to spot communication problems. This is because the organization charts indicate how employees are linked to other employees in the business; the organization chart helps individuals see their positions in a firm. This can help them appreciate their responsibilities, who have authority over them, and who they are accountable to; the organization chart also helps to pinpoint where specialists are needed, and organization charts show how different sections of the firm relate to each other.

The television organization chart has these components as described by Hall. Below is an illustration of a television organization structure according (Stovall 2010: 14).

                  

A Television Organization Chart-Stovall

The President. This is the highest executive position at a television station. He/she is often the owner or the representative of the owner of a television station. In other television stations, this position carries the name of the Managing Director or the General Manager. This person oversees all activities done in the organization like production, advertising, budget issues, community relations, ensuring achieving goals of the mission statement, etc. He is the decision-maker of short and long-term objectives apart from the television board committee.

(www.ehow.com) argues that the General Manager reports to the station owner while several departments report to the GM, including the news department, production, sales, business, and engineering.

The vice president is in the second command of the president. Usually, his major work is to ensure active implementation and monitoring of implemented ideas and programs succeed on behalf of the president. Such ideas can be like a new youth program sensitizing on positive living for good health and long life for the development of Malawi.

The News Director heads the news department. Checks how news programs are being run, how producers are coordinating with reporters, and also lead duties designed by producers during production.

(Fourie 2005: 390) argues that a director is a person in charge of working out production details; coordinating the activities of the production staff and non-camera talent; working out positions of camera and talent or actors and presenters on the set; selecting the camera shots during the production; and supervising post-production work.

The director therefore his main role is to coordinate activities so that his team produces the desired output worthy to broadcast. (Cronje et al 1996: 108) argue that coordination means the dividing up of the total task of the enterprise into smaller units so as to take advantage of specialization to achieve the aims of the enterprise as productively as possible. This dividing of the work into smaller jobs, however, immediately raises the problem of cooperation or the coordination of the divided tasks and the various objectives which the various departments are working towards as an integrated whole to achieve the primary objective of the enterprise.

Producers come up with a production concept. In other words the ‘they hatch the production concept’. He then budgets for the entire production process, makes a major decision which guides the production process. He is the team leader thus works with writers, decides on the key talent, hires the director where there is no in-house director, and guides the general direction of the production. The producer is assisted by the assistant producer throughout the production.

Anchors are those that have personal strength and authority, as though the bearer of that title, through a combination of experience, personality and charisma is holding the program together and somehow grounding it in reality. They are also newsreaders or newscasters (Boyd 2001: 165).

Assignment editors are in charge of assigning duties to reporters. Where reporters get news, when to bring news items, are some of the activities they look into. They also write and come up with headlines on fished stories which they as well edit before broadcast.

Reporters fetch news stories and sometimes do write down those news ideas into readable stories. These make the news department live and active.

Writers do write down news stories from news ideas brought by reporters.  

Videographers are also called cameramen. They do shoot shots assigned by the responsible producers. For example, whether it is a shooting script or treatment script videographers are the right people to manage the shooting job.

Sports editors edit sports news. They do assign sports reporters to reporting duties.  

Meteorologists do prepare news of climate and weather changes. They even report forecasts of climate as well as weather.

All discussed positions above fall under the news department which comprise program manager who design new programs, control and monitors them; production manager, who is responsible for making sure that the programs are produced as intended by the producer as well as directed and ensures programs are made ready for broadcast. He also checks matters of decency and laws to comply with laws of the land and journalistic principles like ethics; talent, includes actors, reporters, hosts, guests, etc; and studio crew which includes all studio personnel like lighting, technical, camera operators, costume directors, electronic character generators, audio and visual directors, etc.

Another department is business. This department is composed of a business manager, accounting manager, personnel manager, sales manager, local sales manager, national sales manager, account executives, traffic manager, and building maintenance.

The business manager is responsible for managing all television business activities across the business department as mentioned in the above paragraph including advertising and coverage of public and private functions which is one way of generating finances for the television.

Another important department is the engineering department. This department is headed by the chief engineer who subordinates the transmitter manager, remote manager, maintenance manager, and engineers. The main duty of this department is to ensure that the broadcast transmission is perfect and technical faults like picture blurring, sound jamming are avoided and/or rectified on time with desirably with improvement like that of picture quality. The engineering department also expands the transmission network for television to have wide viewership.   

Finally, the organization chart shows areas of specialization. (Cronje et al 1996: 108) define specialization as the basic principle on which organization rests is that of specialization or the way in which a task is broken up into smaller units so as to take advantage of specialized knowledge or skills to improve productivity. The best example of specialization or the division of labor is still the assembly line, which is usually attributed to the inventive mind of Henry Ford.

REFERENCES

Boyd, A. 2001. Broadcast Journalism. 5^th edition. London: Focal Press

Cronje, GJ et al. 1996. Introduction to Business Management. 3^rd edition. London: Thomson

Hall, D et al. 1997. Business Studies. OrmsKirk: CPL

Fourie, PJ. 2005. Media Studies. 2^nd Volume. Lansdowne: Juta.

Julia, C. 2011. ‘Organization structure of a television station’. Accessed at www.enhow.com. Date Accessed: 26/02/11.

Stovall, JG. 2011. ‘Television and Radio Charts’. Accessed at www.enhow.com. Date Accessed: 26/02/11.

Which other broadcast media - television topic would you like covered? Leave a comment?

HOW NATURAL RIGHTS OF MEN ARE BEING ABUSED BY CULTURAL AND RELIGIOUS PRACTICES By Andrew Bishop Mkandawire (AB Deevado)-MC Yr 4 4th May, 2012 Share World Open University-BT Campus

Natural rights are those rights that every individual claim and possess them right from birth to the day when one dies. These rights guarantee enjoyment of fundamental freedoms.  

(www.juragentium.unifi.com) argue that the paradigm of this universalism is represented by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, passed by the United Nations in 1948. It reads: "All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights" (art. 1) and specifies that "Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, color, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status" (art. 2).

Cultural activities abuse natural rights of men through matrilineal descent, patrilineal descent and ceremonial traditions.

In matrilineal descent according to (Kottak 2008: 213) people join the mother’s group automatically at birth and stay members throughout life. Matrilineal descent groups therefore include only the children of the group’s women. In Malawi the Chewa tribe does practice this descent and the man loses ownership of children, property and wealth and authority over the family. This practice abuses natural right of men for example right to family and marriage in which according to (Constitution of Malawi section 22 (2)) state that each member of the family shall enjoy full and equal respect and shall be protected by law against all forms of neglect, cruelty or exploitation.

Patrilineal descent practice also abuse a right to marry as it demands men to pay Bride-Price to wife’s parents. In Tumbuka tribe this is called Lobola. This means a man is likely to be denied to take a woman to himself as a wife without such a payment. In consideration, many Malawian families’ sons are poor and cannot afford to pay bride price worthy 5 cows for a wife.

Some cultural traditions in Malawi for example deny men from associating themselves with their wives for some time. For example, Litiwo is a Yawo marriage ceremonial tradition which snatches a woman who has given birth to the first born child from a man. Elder women give a woman some marriage antics including sexual, how to treat relatives, domestic care and at most how to care for the newly born baby. The right to family and marriage which in this case is the natural right of a man is abused.

Cultural traditions again abuse natural rights of men. For example, Sena tribe of the southern region of Malawi practices forced Kulowa Kufa and Fisi. The former practice forces man to cleanse a deceased family from misfortunes by having sexual intercourse with a widow and the latter practice involves a man to have sexual intercourse with just initiated girls from Chinamwali (the initiation ceremony). All the two cultural practices are inforced by a chief of the village. The right to liberty and freedom of conscience is abused which according to (Constitution of Malawi section 33(1)) state that every person shall have right to freedom of conscience, religion, belief and thought, and to academic freedom.

Since the practices describes are a heath risk as sexually transmitted diseases can be contracted by men, their right to health is also abused. In addition men have the right to economic activity which cannot progress if they can be infected with HIV/AIDS. This means poverty levels will extremely increase in such rural communities as well as urban areas.

(Ibadam 1999: 27) argues that although the health impacts of the disease alone are ample cause for concern, there are additional reasons why the development community in general and policymakers in particular should be concerned about the HIV/AIDS epidemic. First, wide spread poverty and unequal distribution of income that typify underdevelopment appear to stimulate the spread of HIV. Second, the accelerated labor migration, rapid urbanization, and cultural modernization that often accompany growth also facilitate the spread of HIV. Third, at a household level AIDS deaths exacerbate the poverty and social inequality that are conducive to a larger epidemic, thus creating a vicious cycle.

Religious practices do also abuse natural rights of men. These practices include religions rules, ceremonies and directives.

Men are denied sex from their wives when attending religious ceremonies like fasting, feasting, mesa. These ceremonies are conducted by both Christians (Saturday and Sunday worshippers) and Muslims. This abuses natural right to family and marriage. At the same time such religious practices abuses freedom of association of men with their friends and relatives.

Muslim religion does give women financial directive as right. Women's rights in the Qur'an are based around the marriage contract. A woman, according to Islamic tradition, does not have to give her pre-marriage possessions to her husband and receives a mahr (dowery) which she is allowed to keep. Furthermore, any earnings that a woman receives through employment or business is hers to keep and need not be contributed towards family expenses. This is because the financial responsibility for reasonable housing, food and other household expenses for the family, including the spouse, fall entirely on the husband. In traditional Islamic law, a woman is also not responsible for the upkeep of the home and may demand payment for any work she does in the domestic sphere.^[47] This varies considerably in practice however (www.sillybelifes.com).

This Muslim directive though it is according to Qur’an it abuses the right to equality of family responsibility. (Constitution of Malawi 2000: 16 section 20(1)) argues that discrimination of persons in any form is prohibited and all persons are, under any law, guaranteed equal and effective  protection against discrimination on grounds of race, color, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, nationality, ethnic or social origin, disability, property, birth or other status.

The same Islamic religion enforces male circumcision as a religious practice. This abuses the natural right of men of dignity. For example the constitution of Malawi state that no person shall be subjected to medical or scientific experimentation without his/her consent. In addition the right to liberty is also abused. This is because the practice is compulsory and suppresses freedom of choice.

Finally, although some cultural and religious practices do abuse natural rights of men influenced by women interest to some extent, all humans have to enjoy equality. This notion however contradicts with legal rights which can overpower in the interest of justice and public uprightness. In Islam for example gender roles are being promoted to ensure equality between men and women is achieved.

(www.sillybeliefs.com) argues that Qur’an expresses two main views on the role of women. It both stresses the equality of women and men before God in terms of their religious duties (i.e. belief in God and his messenger, praying, fasting, paying zakat (charity), making hajj (pilgrimage to Mecca/ Medina)) and places them "under" the care of men (i.e. men are financially responsible for their wives). In one place it states: "Men are the maintainers and protectors of women, because Allah hath made the one of them to excel the other, and because they spend of their property (for the support of women)." The Quran explains that men and women are equal in creation and in the afterlife. Surah an-Nisa' 4:1 states that men and women are created from a single soul (nafs wahidah). One person does not come before the other, one is not superior to the other, and one is not the derivative of the other. A woman is not created for the purpose of a man. Rather, they are both created for the mutual benefit of each other.^{[Qur'an 4:34]}

This is how natural rights of men are abused with cultural and religious practices.

REFERENCES

Ibadan, B. 1999. Confronting AIDS. Oxford: UNAIDS

Kottak, CP. 2008. Cultural Anthropology. 12^th edition. Boston: Mac Graw-Hill

Juragentium. 2011. ‘Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Accessed at

www.juragentium.unifi.com. Date Accessed: 15/03/11

Sillybeliefs. 2011. ‘Women in Isram’. Accessed at www.sillybeliefs. Date Accessed: 15/03/11