Friday 26 November 2010

Storm at Nation Center over Churchil Live

A recent edition of Churchil Live that Nation television (NTV) airs every Thursday night has stirred a storm and almost cost the jobs of some TV programmes controllers at the Nation Centre.

It happened that Churchil invited reporter Mohamed Ali of KTN's infamous Jicho Pevu seriess to share podium with his former colleague John Allan-Namu who is now working with NTV. Apparently, Churchil's producers have not been consulting Nation Media managers over guests to be invited to the show that is pre-recorded.

So the Nation managers are mad that a ''star'' reporter with a rival station had been featured by NTV popular programme. I did not watch the programme in question - not that i watch anything anyway on Kenyan TV - not the news, nothing, except say Tusker Project Fame on Sunday alone, but i am told Ali and Allan-Namu were discussing how they achieve their investigative ''feat''.

So from last week, the Nation TV managers started vetting Churchil's post-produced show (on Tuesday afternoon) before it airs on Thursday!

My two cents on this. It is utter rubbish that such pettiness can still be seen in a country like Kenya with largely developed media environment. That means the media in this country is miles away from coming close to UK or European counterparts. Last week, a top French TV replayed huge section of BBC TV programme - panorama.
Also, quite regularly, TVs play footage from their rival stations, while clearly indicating that this video is from so and so - rivals. with nnewspapers, you will find reportage saying ''speaking to The Guardian, blah blah...'' when the newspaper reporting this is a serious rival like say The Sunday Times.

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