Media owners give KARF 7-day notice to act on ‘poor service’

Media houses have written to Kenya Audience Research Foundation saying that the body has been giving research findings that are not credible and not in touch with the reality of media content consumption.

In the letter, the media houses have told KARF to pull down research studies from circulation they published in the past years. They state that they have lost faith in KARF and have consequently called for the disbandment of the body so that a more credible replacement can be constituted.

The letter reads partly: “Due to urgency of this matter, we do hereby demand that you take action on the above, within 7 days, failure to which, we hereby notify you of our intention to immediately commence a process of identifying an alternative independent and credible industry research process.”

The houses comprising Standard Media Group, Nation Media Group, Radio Africa Group, Kenya Broadcasting Corporation and Capital Group Limited have protested poor research service despite investing millions of shillings to churn content.

The parties further state that what KARF has done could be detrimental to their engagement with advertising clients, as well as making editorial decisions.

“As you are aware most of major media houses have in the past 36 months cancelled their KARF subscriptions because of statistical reliability and poor quality control of the KARF Kenya Audience Tracker,” reads part of the letter while noting reasons for exiting KARF partnerships.

Concerns

Some of the areas the media houses have punched holes in regarding KAF workmanship include sampling of respondents which they say do not represent the true Kenyan picture of consumption. They have also raised complaints on the results which they describe as inconsistent and unreliable.

They have further criticized KARF for using what they term as old fashioned methodologies, adding that their reflection of media use is inaccurate because it does not involve analysis on digital media.