Kenya Television Network
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Kenya Television Network (KTN) is a leading television station in Kenya with its headquarters at the I & M Towers in downtown Nairobi. It was founded in March 1990 by Jared Kamgwana and was the first non-pay privately owned TV-station in Africa, and the first to break KBC's monopoly in Kenya. KTN became famous for Activism Journalism in the 1990s, developing a sophisticated, aggressive and unique style news coverage, but has since developed Business Reporting as its main staple. KTN became the model which governments in Africa used when they allowed for media liberalisation to take place in the late 1990s. Many of the new radio and TV stations across East and Central Africa not only relied on KTN as a model, but benefited directly in terms of recruiting former KTN staff to run their operations.
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[edit] History
Since 1990, Kenya Television Network has been in operation, offering a mixture of relayed re-transmission of Cable News Network (CNN) programming, business and entertainment, as well as MTV, and European, American and Australian programming, in addition to programs developed in other African states. KTN also filed stories for use by affiliated foreign stations. KTN reporters doubled as foreign correspondents and news sources for CNN World Report, BBC, and VOA. Transmitting on the UHF channel, KTN started out as a pilot project for a 24-hour subscriber TV service in Nairobi and its environs, but abandoned plans to scramble its signal and for most of the 1990s derived its revenue from advertising and TV production services. Founded by Jared Kangwana, its early success attracted bids for joint ownership by London-based Maxwell Communications, by South African MNET, and by the then ruling party Kenya African National Union (KANU).
The station won the bid to carry the 1992 Olympics, as well as the rights to several other international events. The negotiations for global television rights to the 1992 Olympic festivals in Albertville and Barcelona marked the first time that the International Olympic Committee (IOC) had exercised complete authority over financial discussions with the world's television networks. KTN has proven adept at competing internationally against other media corporations. Effectively, the competition represented KTN forced the state-owned Kenya Broadcasting Service, as well as other stations in neighbouring African states to improve the quality of programming.
While Jared Kangwana had plans to expand KTN, and had built new facilities to house the station, he allowed free rein to KTN's news division. KANU functionaries frequently called the newsroom and editors on behalf of the state-president of Kenya, Daniel arap Moi, to demand the spiking of KTN news stories. Such control was sanctioned by Moi himself, who had developed the habit while he was still vice-president under state-president Jomo Kenyatta. As vice-president, Daniel arap Moi had grown used to making regular calls to the offices of The Standard which was foreign-owned at that time, and to other media outlets, to demand that they drop stories or modify them. The practice was revived when the KTN was established.
Nonetheless, the success of KTN inspired Africans. As a result, several independent productions were set up in Kenya to generate programs to service both KTN and KBC, as well as other stations that were to be established. Many of the exile communities from neighbouring African states relied on KTN to air their concerns. The station fostered a marked change in the urban culture of Kenya as well.
The vast majority of beneficiaries of the growth of KTN were the music and theatre industries, as well as the African fashion industry, including Kelu Modeling, that benefited from the improved media culture. Nairobi, already the hub of the East and Central African region, became even more fashionable, hosting more international events and trade shows, and attracting more tourists from all over the world. The quality and popularity of programming at KTN was remarkably exceptional, even by international standards. In these early years, Kenyan commercials began to win international awards, and foreign correspondents flying into Africa came increasingly to depend on KTN reporters for orientation and research. KTN also provided briefings for relief agencies and corporate investors, as well as access to KTN facilities for editing and filing stories to stations outside Africa.
Even though it was privately owned, KTN struggled to provide independent news coverage because of excessive political interference with its editorial direction. The political interference finally forced KTN to scrap the transmission of local news for over one year between 1993 and 1994. In the editorial meeting at which the announcement was made by the General Manager Mike Roles, the reporters in the newsroom stood stunned while Roles rationalised the decision to scrap the reporting on local news, claiming that it was necessitated by financial considerations only.
Eventually KTN was acquired by the Standard Group, consisting of African business people, and partly owned by Daniel arap Moi. The Standard has a daily circulation of 54,000. It also publishes a Kiswahili paper called Baraza. Besides The Standard and KTN, this media house also operates Capital FM radio which broadcasts in Nairobi and world wide via the internet. Capital FM has since been acquired by Chris Kirubi a Kenyan businessman. Kangwana later sued the government and the Standard Group for moneys owed him and for compensation for his losses.
[edit] Media revolution
When the Kenya Television Network (KTN) opened in 1990, it caused a major shift in the role of electronic media in Africa. The station caused a stir when it broadcast news bulletins that did not start with reports about a Head of State as was common throughout Africa at that time. KTN became so popular that there was a massive spike in television sales in Kenya. KTN was watched closely by other governments in Africa to see how it would impact the public and the politics. The government of Uganda sent analysts to observe KTN activities and used it in the model station for media liberalisation in Uganda. Some of the reporters at KTN were invited to help start and manage new private radio and TV stations in Kenya and in other African states.
The KTN came at a very opportune moment as it was in the middle of the multiparty democracy movement in Africa, and it became the first TV station to give voices to the subversives, dissidents and opposition politicians. KTN covered the most controversial events that included the volatile political chaos of the transition period from dictatorial single-party state systems to multiparty democracy in the early 1990s. KTN reporters endured being tear gassed alongside the opposition luminaries in Africa's transition to democracy. KTN was also the first station to send reporters into Somalia after the fall of the Siad Barre regime. The station actively sought to cover stories in the rest of Africa, an attitude that was uncommon for TV stations in Africa at the time.
[edit] Trail blazers
The TV editors, reporters, producers, and anchors of KTN during those critical years of the 1990s included Catherine Kasavuli, Jacqueline Thom, who had also reported on the first multiparty elections in Zambia, Lydia Manyansi, and Charles Wachira who covered the refugee crises in the region. There were also Christine Nguku, Mercy Oburu, CNN Anchor Zain Verjee, Robert Ochieng, Patricia Gashengu, Annette Kanana-Bazira, who produced an interfaith show on Sundays, Ruth Mutia, Njoroge Mwaura, Isaiah Kabira, Jeff Koinange, as well as the editors Sammy Masara, Abel Ndumbu, Mike Roles and Herman Igambi. Several of the reporters, including Mercy Oburu, Christine Nguku and the producer Annette Bazira have also attended Daystar University, a liberal arts college that produced influential alumni in the late 1980s and early 1990s who have had a disproportionately large impact on media and politics in Africa.
KTN staff in its early years included Joseph Warungu who went on to become the head of BBC's Africa Service. Another KTN alumnus is Dan Kashagama, the founder of the African Unification Front, who originally covered the Somalia desk at KTN. KTN's Kathleen Openda, remains the most popular broadcast personality in East and Central Africa. Ms. Openda also launched two high-impact programs: The Breakfast Show and Third Opinion. These live, interactive shows invited Africans to tackle issues of governance and civil society, and to express themselves freely on a wide range of topics.
KTN's personalities also doubled as celebrities in Africa. Jaqueline Thom was a Miss World contestant and Miss Kenya prior to joining KTN as a political reporter and news anchor. Jeff Koinange is now a lead reporter for K-24 and a former CNN reporter. The news editor Oliver Litondo is also an international celebrity film actor. Litondo's filmography includes major parts in Hollywood blockbusters, including The Lion of Africa alongside Brian Dennehy. In Sheena, the 1984 remake of the classic, Litondo plays Chief Haromba. He also features in the classic Italian movie Orzowei, Il Figlio Della Savana. Oliver Litondo also played alongside James Earl Jones, Isabella Rossellini, John Lithgow, and Tony Todd in Ivory Hunters. Litondo mentored many of the original group of reporters during the early 1990s. He studied medicine in the US, before taking media studies at Harvard University.
[edit] End of an Era
In October 1993 security officers boarded a loaded commercial airliner, seized the passport of KTN Director Jared Kangwana, and prevented him from departing on a business trip. Kangwana said that the act was part of a government intimidation campaign to force him to relinquish control of KTN to the then ruling party, KANU. The government took no action to institute criminal proceedings against Kangwana but ultimately succeeded in forcing him to cede the company to KANU. The station is now part of The Standard Group, which also publishes The Standard newspaper.
In spite of the political constraints, KTN has remained the avant-garde station in Africa, pioneering and initiating trends in African journalism. Although no longer as political as in the early 1990s, especially because the original frontline reporters of KTN have moved on, or have mellowed, the next generation of reporters includes exceptionally talented journalists such as Boni Odinga who does social commentaries, Robert Soi who covers sports, Wangeci Murage, a renowned drama producer and director, reporters and news anchors Beatrice Marshall, David Ohito, and Linus Ole Kaikai. Several dozens of KTN's reporters have won international awards for journalism. Business news editor Patrick Maigua was the 1999 electronic business journalist of the year and went on to win the world acclaimed CNN Africa Journalist of the Year business category in 2003.
Business journalism has grown remarkably and has become the main staple of most stations in Africa. At KTN Mercy Oburu, now one of the chief editors and anchor for Business Reporting on the program Business Weekly. KTN also introduced Business Africa, a show on business produced outside the African continent, as well as the once-popular program Africa Report. Africa Report lost popularity when it became evident that the show had been taken over by the South African PR machine as it was mainly about South Africa or a South African company in another African country.
[edit] The Legacy
In 2006 Kathleen Openda-Mvati unveiled Enterprise Kenya a new show that is geared more to the entrepreneur as opposed to the KTN Business Weekly that concentrate on what the big companies are doing. Herman Igambi went on to become Editor-in-Chief of Citizen Radio and TV Network in Kenya. Gideon Muoka, one of the original KTN producers became head of the newly established Sanyu in Uganda. CNN anchor and presenter Zain Virjee also started her television broadcast career as an anchor on the KTN evening news.
KTN alum Charles Wachira went on to become editor of Society Magazine in Kenya, and worked for the Inter Press Service, for NewsAfrica and Africa Today while based in Harare, and also for the Third World Network and the British based PANOS. He is the Managing Editor of The Financial Post, Kenya.
KTN remains noteworthy given Africa's media history. Ironically, KTN's reputation helped to set Kenya apart for its apparent ability to maintain one of the few, by international standards, vibrant media outlets while undergoing severe political upheaval, violent repression and cultural transition.
