Three media houses justified to cease broadcasting

NAIROBI: Like most Kenyans, I have been following with piqued curiosity the titanic tussle between Standard Group Limited (KTN), Royal Media Services (Citizen TV) and Nation Media Group (NTV and Qtv) on one hand and the Communications Authority of Kenya (CAK) and Ministry of Information, Communication and Technology on the other. After months of seemingly never ending lawsuits and public posturing on digital migration, the Supreme Court appeared to draw a line under the issue when it delivered what many consider a compromise verdict on February 13. The court restored the three media houses’ self provisioning licence, which had been withdrawn by CAK, but also allowed the authority to switch off all analogue frequencies.

CAK wasted little time in instructing the three media houses, operating as the Africa Digital Networks Ltd consortium (ADN), to switch their TV stations off the analogue platform by midnight. The directive was disobeyed, prompting CAK to obtain a court order to forcefully shut down the consortium’s analogue transmission stations. The court order was granted and fully executed on February 14. The affected media houses immediately responded by switching off their digital transmission as well, effectively plunging the country into a TV blackout.