Abstract

Since the emergency of broadcast media in Nigeria, it has been a tool in the hand of government, whether the government at the central, regional or state level with the core objective to serve the power that be rather than checkmating the government and serve as the voice of the voiceless. Government used it as its megaphone, extension of their ministry of information and propaganda machinery. However, one of the ways to curb government excess control and ineffective of broadcast media was the deregulation of the sector like print media. In 1992, General Ibrahim Babangida, deregulate the electronic media by Decree number 38 of 1992 and since then the private media has continued to struggle and compete with the government media. Thus, the research aims at comparing the performance of government owned and privately owned broadcasting media organization with case study of FRCN, Ibadan and Splash F.M both  the station are within Oyo State. The paper is anchored on uses and gratifications and free press theory. Survey method was used for this work coupled with 120 copies of questionnaires that were distributed within Oyo state to listeners of both stations. Data collected were analysed and interpreted using descriptive statistics (frequency percentage and tables). It is obvious that majority of the respondents prefer private radio most, follow by the federal radio while less respondents like listen to radio from state government media, the reason being that state government use it for propaganda and control it absolute especially by the ruling party. The research recommended that government owned media should pick up the challenge from privately owned media and upgrade its mode of operation, in staffing, programming and packaging.