Citizen TV on site following alleged underhanded practices and unfair domination in media space

Citizen TV was thrust into the spotlight after a popular Kenyan tweep shared a revealing thread detailing the media channel’s alleged underhanded practices and unfair business competition.

The wire, which seeks to uncover the station’s national lead over recent years, uncovered the recurring consistency which has seen the Royal Media Services station maintain an unassailable lead over all other stations for more than half -decade.

Various issues raised, which according to the author of the thread constitute the malaise affecting the station, are the fact that the station has “demonstrated no ingenuity, creative inventiveness and willingness to go further” regarding its innovative nature.

Below is the entire thread as compressed by us.

The traditional Kenyan media landscape has, for almost a decade now, shown signs of lethargy, slowness and stagnation as the digital world overtakes that of television, relegating the television terrain to the background.

Kenya is one of the most dynamic countries in Africa when it comes to media, existing in the same competitive basin as Nigeria, South Africa and Ghana.

As Africa continues to develop as a continent and many of its countries strive to achieve higher levels of growth and technological advancement, Kenya remains firmly at the forefront of the competition, littered with various high-powered television channels and aggressive information and entertainment programming. .

But despite Kenya’s position in the African media landscape, the country’s television channels continue to exhibit a certain lag which appears to have been caused by unfair media practices associated with inequitable domination.

Interestingly, Citizen TV, which has been touted over the years as the number one television channel in Kenya, has been leading in every media poll for at least five years – despite the fact that the channel has not demonstrated none the ingenuity, creative inventiveness and willingness to evolve higher in regards to their innovative capacity.

Since 2020, for example, and obviously years before, Citizen TV has come out on top every time various investigative bodies have published their results on the main Kenyan television channel and with a percentage that, at times, seems to remain unchanged and questionable .

Due to the TV channel’s undisputed dominance and tight grip on the Kenyan media terrain, the Kenyan television world’s window of creativity, fair competitiveness and even commercial ascendancy has become greatly compromised.

A quick look at Citizen TV’s influence over all other media channels will reveal an implausible trend: a 2022 Geopoll survey showed that Citizen TV had a whopping 24% share, while NTV came in second. with a measly 9.5%.

A CAK 2020 report, released in December 2019, showed that Citizen TV scored an impressive 48%, while its closest competitor, KTN Home, managed only a paltry 11.9%.

An IPSOS survey released in 2024 showed that Citizen TV was the most watched channel across the country with 39.68 percent market share out of a total of 48.13 percent.

Doing the math, it’s easy to see that the channel claims to control 13,133,100 views out of a total Kenyan market of 33,097,640 viewers – and this in a country that has several other leading TV channels, some of which have demonstrated impressive growth and have grown exponentially to capture the market. share.

In 2023, for example, the same Ipsos survey found that Citizen TV was the most watched channel with 68.4%, followed by KTN in second with 25.3% and NTV in third with 11%.

A year later, a Media Council of Kenya survey would place Citizen TV as the most watched TV channel in Kenya at 35%, followed by NTV at an astonishingly low 11%.

The incredible disparity of the figures, the questionable nature of the margins of difference, the inadequacy of the various investigative bodies and the sometimes ridiculously high ranking of Citizen TV’s market share are not only suspicious but also seriously indecent.

It is ridiculous to think that Citizen TV, in its current makeup, can, for example, reach up to 68% national audience, given the myriad of challenges it poses in talent management, production content and digital business.

Lately, the station has witnessed an almost unprecedented hemorrhage of talent, with most of its star journalists and presenters leaving to join more lucrative offices – Waihiga Mwaura left for the BBC, Victoria Rubadiri left for CNN, Francis Gachuri and Chemutai Goin also left. for various government offices.

Unsurprisingly, none of these talents were replaced. Insider information tells us that there are actually no plans to replace these heavyweights and, more shockingly, other big names are also considering leaving.

Citizen TV is currently a Kenyan media relic that, even after the introduction of its digital arm, is still struggling to evolve in the ever-changing digital ecosystem stifled by pernicious competition from dozens of YouTube journalists.

A media bogged down by all these challenges, which also include an inability to navigate modern reporting and a pool of outdated editors, who have failed to move with the times and embrace a new-age television space , cannot continue to claim to hold the places. This is what it does – and has the market share it boasts of – without shady and underhanded practices.

The ability for Citizen TV to pay for these polls, influence the results and take over the market, advertising to millions and gaining bragging rights, is not only real but also widely questionable.

The Kenyan television industry has therefore suffered an incalculable loss of advertising revenue and also some competitive nervousness due to the unsporting behavior of Citizen TV, supported only by the deep pockets of the President and the cunning tendencies of the electoral authorities.

In fact, the most fundamental risk of Citizen TV’s media dominance is the dismissive arrogance that comes with being number one. Armed with this reality, the chain fundamentally devalues ​​talent and does not see the need to better compensate its employees which, according to it, it can easily distribute while maintaining its superior position.

An employee seeking a pay raise, for example, may be quickly fired or even asked to resign if desired, as Citizen TV does not value individual talent as it views its dominance as the only bargaining chip and anyone who needs to be paid more. as a simple consumable block in the matrix.

In such an environment, TV shows developed and broadcast by the channel may also be of lower quality and they will sell anyway. The station’s undisputed lead essentially means that anyone willing to sell premium material to the station can walk away with a sack of potatoes, because the station believes that heavy investment, or not, does not diminish its advances and cannot damage its impregnable reputation.

This is a harsh indictment of the station’s contribution to the artistic and financial growth of the creative sector.

On a level playing field, each of the Kenyan TV channels, NTV, KTN, TV 47, K24, KBC and many others, can approach the business ethically and each stakeholder can reap the benefits depending on the ‘s evolving contributions to the industry as information dissemination, broadcast scheduling and digital sophistication are concerned.

As it stands, the industry can choose to collapse under the weight of rigged dominance – or demand accountability and watch it rise like the proverbial phoenix.

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