CHILDREN TELEVISION PROGRAMMING AND CULTURAL LEARNING IN NIGERIA.

Abstract: It can today be examined in Nigeria that children are fast abandoning the indigenous cultural values for the foreign ones and the media is said to contribute to this development due to the broadcast of foreign television programmes by tv stations in the country. The need to promote, protect, and sustain the country’s indigenous cultural values are of great importance if Nigeria hopes to prevent them from being washed away. Children’s love for television is undeniable and being the future of the country, what is the extent to which television is used to impact children with social and cultural values of the society. The paper thus investigates the extent to which children Television is utilized to impact Nigerian Children with the country’s cultural values. It looks closely at the children programmes of two biggest and leading Nigeria’s television stations; the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA), and African Independent Television (AIT), representing both state-owned and privately-owned television stations in the country. Using Development Media and Cultivation theories as underlying theory, the study concludes that though there is an improvement on the part of the television stations as they now broadcast socially and culturally relevant children programmes. There is however insufficiency in both quantity and quality of children programmes, as well as the time allotted for them to allow any meaningful long-time cultural impact to be realized at the current state as may be intended by the producers of the programmes.