It has emerged that only four media houses in Kenya are beneficiaries of the KSh1.1 billion advertising budget by the government.
Speaking during the 2019 Annual Media Summit in Nairobi, Media Council of Kenya boss David Omwoyo said the statistics were from the recent payments by the government advertising agency, which released KSh1.2B owed to media houses.
“I will not name them but I can confirm that four mainstream media houses received KSh1.1 billion, meaning the other 95% were left to share the balance of KSh100 million,” said Dr Omwoyo.
“At least KSh60 billion of this budget is controlled by one advertising agency.”
However, he singled out Royal Media Services as one mainstream media player that was not a beneficiary of government advertising, challenging other media entities to emulate the giant firm in designing innovative strategies to attract advertisers Andy generate revenue.
“They have structured their business model that way such that whether or not government advertises with them they don’t care.
“So media entities must also not be like cry babies when it comes from advertising share but rather be creative in how they position themselves through quality of their content so that advertisers then have no choice.”
Themed Media, Accountability & Good Governance, the AMS kicked off Thursday 8 August and brought together different media players Andy stakeholders, attracting among other partners, the embassies of Germany, United States and Canada.
Other partners included the ethics and anti-corruption commission, energy & petroleum regulatory authority and Kenya Film Commission, among others.
Katiba Institute and Dialog Kenya were among non-state actors involved in the two-day event that preceded the 8th Annual Journalism Excellence Awards.
Delegates’ deliberations was a review of the implementation process of the Access To I formation Act 2016, enhancing accountability and transparency, ending impunity against journalists and the media’s role as a corruption watchdog, among other thematic areas.
Also discussed were independent content production, digital technology and media viability in Kenya.
