TV digital migration calls for sobriety, patience

Last week, the Media Council of Kenya requested the Government for a five-month extension of the digital migration date, which had been set to commence on December 31, 2014.

The migration is to be carried out in three phases, with the original phase covering Nairobi and its environs. The second phase, targeting the Coastal area, Nyeri, Meru, Kisumu, Webuye, Kakamega, Kisii, Nakuru was be effected in February with the final phase covering Garissa, Kitui, Migori and Namanga in March 2014.

In submitting the request on behalf of the major media houses to the Communications Authority of Kenya, Media Owners Association chairman Sam Shollei pointed out that Nation Media Group, Royal Media Services and the Standard Group needed additional time to put in place infrastructure capable of beaming digital signals across the country.

The massive infrastructure the media houses require does not come cheap and needs time to acquire, test and confirm its effectiveness. It should also be noted that the period the media houses took in court challenging the switch ate into their time and resources.

Cabinet Secretary for Information and Communication Technology Fred Matiang’i has ruled out the possibility of granting that extension, simply saying players in the industry had procrastinated long enough.

What Dr Matiang’i failed to take into account was the reason time elapsed before the houses could move.

At the time the Government wanted to effect the switch-over in September, there were only 27,000 set-top boxes in the country, yet Nairobi alone has two million households with TV sets.

That would have disenfranchised millions of households by denying them their inalienable constitutional right to access information. Currently, KTN has a total of 10 transmitters, several masts, antennas and heavy broadcast infrastructure, including generators acquired at great cost that cannot just be discarded without occasioning great losses.

This, in part, is the reason the media house needs time to create an interface between the analogue and digital transmissions. Television as a business is dependent on viewership and advertisement.

In December last year, Tanzania hurriedly made the digital migration without adequate structures in place. In the processes, its viewership collapsed, besides loss of advertising revenue as 80 per cent of advertisers moved away.

That is not a scenario we would like to have repeated here. Many Kenyans are not able to purchase set-top boxes in the time allotted by the Government. Since television viewership is about millions of Kenyans who depend on it for information, it is only fair that the Government should consider their plight, which is reflected in the Media Owners Association’s request for an extension on the migration dates.

It is our belief Government exists for the good of the people it serves and anything that would otherwise jeopardise them requires careful examination.

The Government should listen to the voices of reason lest it be perceived to be acting at the behest of multinational corporations that have shown a great deal of interest in the digital migration and stand to make a killing out of it either through the sale of set-top boxes, the transmission and distribution of the digital signal or the installations needed to make the whole exercise a success.