GTV (Ghana Television or Ghana TV) is the national public broadcaster of Ghana, run by the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation. It commenced operations on 31 July 1965, and was originally known as GBC TV.
History
The Ghanaian government set up a feasibility study for the introduction of a television service in 1959. This led to a training agreement with Canada in 1961. Training did not start until 1963, under the supervision of two officials from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Frank D. Goodship and Wes Harvison. In the same year, a television training house was created.
Ghana Television was launched on 31 July 1965 at 4pm, after a few months of test transmissions, exactly thirty years since the launch of Radio ZOY (later Radio Ghana). The station's facilities were built by British company Marconi.[1] At its launch speech, Kwame Nkrumah defended that GTV should be used for "education in the broadest purest sense". The channel broadcast from 6pm to 10.30pm on weekdays and 4pm to 10.30pm on weekends. 75% of its programming was local, the highest percentage out of a country in Africa at the time. The remaining 25% was given to foreign programming, including documentaries, feature films and international TV series such as I Love Lucy, The Saint and The Twilight Zone.