Away from the meme of Githeri Media, I think you will agree that Kenyan media sector despite being in a fairly free environment is thoroughly lacking.
Let’s start with Blogs and Other online content. You don’t find many Kenyan sites that are specialists in the topics they cover. They like to extend to other topics. to cover for lack of content. When I come to your site about business issues, don’t start writing stories about Edgar Obare. SMH. You will also find very few sites doing analysis or in depth opinion pieces. Ni list na articles to za ujinga. It’s a shame because when you run a blog you are competing in a global market. I have run one back in the day and it was world class for sure.
Our TV stations have no content. News bulletin is their biggest audience puller. The news anchors are socially perceived to be in the same class as Genge Tone musicians. It’s pathetic tbqh. The human interest stories that the the stations do are irrelevant and boring. The investigative stories they do have no impact and the high profile interviews they get access to are inconsequential. A guy interviewed Uhuru about debt and the President embarrassed him by revealing he hadn’t done research on Japan. Lol, how will you do an interview on public debt with the President and not know about Japan. SMH.
On radio. It became acceptable that kids doing journalism right now Will pave way to “comedians” Can you imagine? Ati jalang’o and mwalimu king’ang’i types get platforms with most audiences to make jokes on important social issues. Now they are ripping people off money at tuma ksh.100 ushinde millioni. Lol.
That is why we are setting up. Siasa News is about pure .ke politics. Nothing else. Hapa KT sisi ni NV. Huko uwanjani,we have experience. Wait till we launch
What bums me is when they are showing a new infrastructure being launched e.g. a new road connecting 2 towns. Instead of focusing on the road, showing where on google maps the road is, showing the features of the new road, comparing old road vs new road, etc they will focus on the politician or govt official who is launching the road then just show a 10 sec clip of the road and its back to you in studio.
Thats why i prefer kuingia youtube kuona akina Alex Chamwanda and John Allan Namu who actually do very decent reports.
its all about knowing your audience. if majority of your audience is excited about sexual topics talk about it and earn your money. a perfect example is Patanisho
It’s simple, i have said it before. The real journalists, who went to media school, Graduated, either from College or Uni found the market flooded with Celebrities. The ones that got in get paid peanuts, directing unqualified people who are paid 6 to 10 times your salo. The rest went into business, opened YouTube accounts doing vlogs or editing for vloggers, opened production houses for music videos and films, others went back to school for masters and phds to teach another bunch of journalists who’ll be unemployed, others got into PR &Marketing, and the rest are still unemployed 10-15 years after graduation doing odd jobs. I can gurantee you, most guys who got out of journalism school between 2006-2012 are tarmacking, its a shit show. Read the papers you’ll find typos, and its no wonder you’ll find a respected newsanchor opting out of news to do a dance show, hahaha…juu journalism has become shit, juu ya Gatekeepers and ofcourse Agenda setting, which ultimately controls what is trending. There’s no room for human interest stories.
Pole OP, @girlciki93 and @Kodiaga I have may started another thread similar to this one. I didn’t want to undermine the present discussion. All the same, it seems we had the same Idea in mind. So here were my thoughts just to build up on the present discussion.
[B]Surely I can’t be alone in feeling this but much of what Kenyans consider to be funny or entertaining is just cringe humor. And don’t get me started with some of the short “comedy skits” flooding social media where acting a fool is being equated to comedy.
Anyway, here is a list of epic cringe worthy TV and radio shows that are painful to watch or listen to. You are free to add your own shows.
[/B]
[ol]
[li]Patanisho[/li][li]Churchill live[/li][li]Dr Kingori/ The Wicked Edition[/li][li]Goteana[/li][li]Maina Kageni and King’ang’i… etc.[/li][/ol]
[B]And please, don’t accuse me of hating on other people’s hustles.
My question is simple; why is cringe-inducing media so popular in Kenya?[/B]
I ran a blog for like 4 years. The content was world class. I got international acclaim. I was embarrassed to see the competition I was categorized with for BAKE Awards. There is no blog content in Kenya. I left because the industry is a cartel. It selects not for audience building but knowing the PR firms. It’s stupid. In a place like the US, content creators focus on content and it is the advertisers who look for them. So industry selects for good content. That’s where you compete. Here the content creator looks for the advertiser. Lol. Industry selects for ability to network, which is funny because writing is an introverts hobby.
The most popular blog is a guy who does stories (Magunga or something). Kenyan Wallstreet does news with analysis like once a month. Even if you invite CEOs to do pieces they can’t articulate.
You can’t find 3 Kenyan blogs in any category that does good opinion/analysis. Not sports, tech, automobile, fashion, etc.