When the three main TV stations, NTV, KTN and Citizen, went off air on the Valentine Day, it was ‘make the hay while the sun shines’ affair for KBC and K24 who were looking to cash on the media blackout to woo more eyeballs and advertisers.
The switch-off of the TV stations offered them a windfall of advertising. It was a chance for the two to make an impact but analysts say they largely squandered the opportunity which may have knocked only once. The return of the three stations will start biting when corporates abandon K24 and KBC for the stations which control around 80% of the audience in Kenya. Now they are back to their usual struggle; few viewership and only a few adverts.
“The marketers in these media houses which weren’t affected by the Communications Authority of Kenya (CAK) switch off should have used the opportunity to tie up some corporates in long-term advertising contracts,” notes one of the analysts. “They are now back to where they belonged before the blackout.”
A joint statement from Standard Group, Nation Media Group and Royal Media Services on Thursday confirmed that their TV stations are ‘here to stay.’ “Today, we are choosing to disappoint the shadowy forces to whom Digital Migration has been a pretext to subdue, weaken or altogether eliminate independent, privately-run television stations. To those forces we say, these broadcasters namely Citizen TV, QTV, KTN and NTV are here to stay and shall not cease to exist,” read part of the statement.
What remains of interest is the new strategies on how the returning stations will amend for the losses made in the 19 days they have been off. On average, they have been losing about Ksh65 million per day, which comes to Ksh1.2 billion for 19 days.
