Broadcasters cite coercion to give signals
What you need to know:
- But forcing the three media houses to make available their channels to either Pang or Signet would be inconsistent with the right to carry their own content as provided by the Self Provisioning Licence reinstated by the Supreme Court on Friday February 13, the media houses argued.
- The TV stations said they had not been broadcasting on the digital platform and the application that was before the Supreme Court “was about being afforded adequate time to order, import and install digital broadcast equipment.”
- On Saturday, at around midday, officials from the Communications Authority of Kenya, accompanied by armed policemen, forced their way into the NTV, Citizen, KTN and QTV transmission stations in Limuru, dismantled and took away equipment.
The forcible shutdown of analogue broadcasting for three media houses by the government is aimed at coercing them to give their signals to other distributors.
According to Africa Digital Network, a consortium that brings together Nation Media Group, which owns NTV and QTV, Royal Media Services, which runs Citizen TV, and the Standard Group, which owns KTN, the government wants the media houses to surrender their signals to government-owned Signet and Chinese-owned Pan African Network Group (Pang).
Forcing the three media houses to make available their channels to either Pang or Signet would be inconsistent with the right to carry their own content as provided by the Self-Provisioning Licence reinstated by the Supreme Court on Friday, the media houses argued.
In a statement to newsrooms on Sunday, the broadcasters also accused the government of forcibly shutting down their analogue transmission and carting away equipment.
EQUIPMENT DISMANTLED
“The three media houses have been broadcasting on (the) analogue platform and the dismantling of the equipment by the CA (Communication Authority of Kenya) in Limuru effectively switched off our transmission,” said the media houses.
They added that the forcible shutdown of analogue broadcasting was clearly calculated to force the three media houses to make their signal available for distribution by the government-owned Signet and the government’s preferred Chinese-owned distributor Pang, which also operates pay TV service provider StarTimes.
The TV stations said they had not been broadcasting on the digital platform and the application that was before the Supreme Court “was about being afforded adequate time to order, import and install digital broadcast equipment”.
On Saturday, at around midday, officials from the Communications Authority of Kenya, accompanied by armed policemen, forced their way into the NTV, Citizen, KTN and QTV transmission stations in Limuru, dismantled the equipment and took it away.
“It is incomprehensible that the ICT Cabinet Secretary (Fred Matiang’i) and the Communications Authority choose to blame the three media houses for a broadcast switch-off that the government and the regulator (are) entirely responsible for.”
The broadcasters also accused the CS of issuing a statement “laced with threats” and aimed at intimidating the media houses into giving in to the “contentious, pre-determined and altogether unacceptable position” taken by the communications regulator on digital signal distribution.
