Franklin Wallah, who headed the K24 TV crime and investigations desk, has joined KTN. Wallah resigned from K24 barely a month ago after returning from Somalia on assignment, which turned out to be his last at the station.
At KTN he will join the crime and investigations desk starting August 3rd 2019, where he is expected to step into the shoes of Mohammed Ali (Jicho Pevu), who quit a few years ago to join politics. He is now the ODM Member of Parliament for Nyali, in Mombasa.
It not very clear why Wallah quit Mediamax-owned station, but sources point to frustration from top editors and management coupled with the quest for better pay and working conditions. On leaving K24, he said, “it was one of my hard decisions to make after a long time.”
Sources indicate he was set to join KTN since last year August but Wallah appears to have taken his time perhaps to size up his prospective employer lest he jumps from the frying pan to the fire.
The KTN crime and investigative desk is headed by Hussein Mohammed, and Wallah is expected to work together with Brian Obuya, Siraj Abdulrahman, who was also at K24, to breath new life into the desk. The desk has been limping since the exits of Jicho Pevu, Dennis Onsarigo to Taita Taveta County government and John Allan Namu into freelance.
The investigative team built by former Managing Editor Joe Ageyo, who later joined Citizen TV, has slowly been dismantled mostly due to frustration. Francis Ontomwa left for BBC earlier this year, while Nicholas Wambua has opted to concentrate on anchoring daytime Swahili news in the Leo Mashinani news segment due to frustration.
It is understood that Wallah will be coming on board with a new investigative program, Jasusi Sugu, which will replace Jicho Pevu that used to air on KTN and now syndicated to TV47. Jicho Pevu had become a brand in itself and Wallah will have to work harder to effectively take over that space.
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Wallah will soon learn that KTN is no bed of roses as its investigations desk, like in all media houses, suffers underfunding and interference from management out to protect commercial interests.
TV stations, in an effort to woo viewers, have lately focused raised their antennae on investigations. NTV has been the biggest supplier of exposes in recent times while Citizen TV is currently having its moment of fame for the Masai Mara University expose unearthing corruption at the institution of higher learning.
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