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The Royal Media Services (RMS) on Wednesday, May 12 barred all their employees from taking part in specific side hustles.
In an internal memo seen by Viral Tea, the management stated its appreciation for the individual brands within the media house’s community.
It, however, warned that the use and deployments of such talent whether in personal or corporate activities, greatly affected and influenced the overall brand of the Company.
"These guidelines endeavor to facilitate and promote the effective and proper use of all talents and staff within the RMS brand umbrella and who protect RMS reputation and brand.
“This means that common sense must be applied. A strict legal interpretation should not be used to justify accepting an advertiser or sponsor which the guidelines intended to stop,” reads an excerpt of the statement.
The company then moved to ban its staff from advertising for any faith or religion, alcohol products, political parties and their candidates.
The management urged staff intending to take part in events or advertisements in certain categories to seek approval from their respective departmental heads.
The categories included; Master of Ceremony in events, advertising for government agencies, advertisements that deal with a controversial subject that is in the matter of public policy and advertisements that could compromise the RMS editorial policy.
“The person from whom approval is sought will consider whether the proposal will meet the principles in these guidelines in particular in relation to the RMS impartiality and brand protection,” reads the statement in part.
Further, the station warned its staff against appearing in any advertising from their show or on their programme.
“Any advertising that features a programme presenter or regular TV or radio artist should be clearly separated from their programmes,” reads the statement.
Their notice comes amid muted chatter of news anchors being ejected from their jobs for starting or having specific side hustles, especially media related and others with media hustles being barred from media jobs in what is termed as ‘conflict of interest’.
Nonetheless many content creators are shifting to digital means in willingness to take the battle to legacy media houses in terms of revenue from advertising of brands.