Fri. Nov 8th, 2024

Shocking revelation as MCK reveals 42% of Kenyans not watching TV

african kids at home.
  • Most watched TV station was Citizen, KTN Home and NTV with 78%,31%, and 21% respectively.
  • Radio Citizen 27%, Radio Jambo22%, Kameme FM15%, Radio Maisha 13%and KBC Radio 11% were the most listened Radio respectively.
  • Newspaper mainly read were Nation newspaper 59%, Standard Newspaper 28% and People’s Daily 5%.
  • Whatsapp, Facebook, YouTube were the most used social media platforms with 27%,26%, and 16% respectively.

According to the recent study finding by the Media Council of Kenya(MCK), 58%of Kenyans consume TV content. This is a drop from a study in 2020 in which about 74% of Kenyans absorbed TV content.

The situation worsens in North Eastern where about 60% of people do not consume the TV content followed by Western 57%, Nyanza 45%, and Coast 42%.

The average time spent watching the TV was 2 hours which is way lower in comparison to the global average time of 3 hours and 24 minutes.

Local content was consumed by 70% while 30% content was foreign. Citizen, KTN home, and NTV were the most-watched TV channels. Most information accessed was by free-to-air set boxes followed by Pay TV, Digital /smart TV.

Online platforms and digital apps were the least used to access the content.

Concerns raised were due to limited coverage to matters affecting rural areas, too much coverage on political matters, and biased content coverage.

The local sports coverage was deemed insufficient, while education and children programs were limited similar to the local content. There is higher usage of the English language which limited consumption.

On consumer protection, some of the adverts were deemed misleading to the consumers, some of the content advocated for social vices eg gambling, some of the content aired was inappropriate during watershed periods. There were a lot of advertisements during and between programs while some of the content reported was deemed to be baseless.

There were several recommendations to the concerns which included an increase in media coverage in rural areas matters, media houses finding a balance on topics being broadcast, and also media houses maintaining unbiased positions and views during broadcasts. There was a plea increase in coverage of local sports and local content and balance in languages used to broadcast to increase content consumption.

Radio content however was consumed by more than 74% of Kenyans on a typical day. The average time used to listen was 2 hours which is higher compared to the global average time of 1 hour.

North Eastern had the lowest listening of 57% followed by Coast with 63% and Nairobi with 69%. more than 80% of the listeners accessed the content through FM radio receiver devices and mobiles, while the others accesses the content set boxes, digital apps, and online platforms.

the most consumed content was entertainment followed by news. 72% of the content was local while the rest was foreign content.

Radio citizen, radio Jambo, Kameme FM, Radio Maisha, and KBC Radio were the most listened by Kenyans in that order.

Print media was only consumed by about 25% of Kenyans. Out of this 46% purchased hard copy newspapers while 27% accessed them through online subscriptions.

The reasons as to why people buy newspaper content was news by 73%, politics 61%, and sports by 47%.

Nation newspaper was the most read by 59% and Standard newspaper 28% and The star by 5%.

The most visited news website was Tuko by 34%, Standard media group by 22%. Nation media and social media pages each had 21%.

64 % of the respondents used social media for entertainment, News with 59%, and networking with 53%. the average time spent was 3 hours which is higher than the global average time of 2 hours and 24 minutes.

Whatsapp, Facebook, and YouTube are the most used platforms. 91% of the social media platforms were accessed through mobile phones,34% on desktops,10% with normal handset with the internet, and 2% on smart TVs and watches.

24 % of the respondents had little or no trust in the media while 23% of the respondents have a lot of trust in the media. More than 50% had some trust in the media.

Television was the most trusted with a rating of 69%, radio by 68%, and websites had the lowest with a rating of 56%.

By Treeza Auma

Treeza Auma is a Digital Content Producer and founder of https://www.ktmn.co.ke KTMN She is also Television journalist at Kenya News Agency and Leadership Accelerator at Women in News.

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