How You Tube came to the rescue of Kenya’s media

The dramatic shut down of the leading television and radio stations to stop them from airing the “swearing in” of NASA leader Raila Odinga saw Kenyans resort to online platforms to keep up with what was happening at Uhuru Park grounds in Nairobi.

Citizen TV, NTV and KTN free to air signals were turned off by the Communications Authority  in the morning as NASA supporters streamed into Uhuru Park.

 The media was left to overwork their digital platforms as their main new sites also went down shortly after Raila took the “oath.” The TV stations resorted to You Tube to channel their coverage.

Standard Group had its  KTN News You Tube live stream channel down went down several days to the event and has been relying on the KTN home platform to air its content. The channel could rarely attract 500 viewers on its entertainment content, but had seen this numbers soar to over a 40,000 viewers at ago.

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The Standard and Daily Nation web sites also went down at some point. At Standard, the digital team was forced to push its content to the SDE entertainment site.

It is not clear yet whether the sites were deliberately shut down by the authorities or were affected by massive traffic.

The Star and Citizen Digital sites were also affected but recorded  increased readership on Tuesday.

The government move, which preceded by a meeting at State House, Nairobi last week where media managers were reportedly warned not to live stream the ceremony or risk losing their licences, was unprecedented and has roundly been condemned.

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