All field reporters attached to Nation FM and QFM have been sacked, BusinessToday can report, raising fears that the radio stations could be either be headed for closure or change of content to entertainment.
About 15 employees of the two radio stations, owned by Nation Media Group, were given redundancy letters between yesterday and today sacking them with immediate effect in a shocking clean-up that has left everyone in the media industry, including Nation staff, guessing.
The radio division has been left with only four newsreaders and one manager, according to an inside source. The strategy by the management is to aggregate news from TV and its newspapers for radio, saving it from employing reporters. The letter, in justifying the sacking, states that the radio stations have been making losses and could not thus sustain reporters on the payroll.
This is the first major cost-cutting move by new CEO Joe Muganda, who took over in July from Linus Gitahi at a time when media revenues had started fledgling due to growing competition from new players and technologies.
For some Nation staff who have been watching the radio performance, the move was long overdue. “Radio has been living on borrowed time,” said a senior journalist based at Nation Centre, indicating the radio stations have been baby-sat for far too long time.
The sackings have raised tension at NTV and Qtv, with fears that they could be next on the chopping block. NTV and Qtv lost substantial revenues during the digital migration stand-off, contributing to the Ksh130 million drop in Nation Media Group’s profit for the half year ended in June.
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