The number of commercial licensed TVs and Radio stations in Kenya increased despite shrinking revenues in the media sector.
A new report by the Communications Authority shows that Licensed Commercial Free to Air TV stations increased by 3.9 percent in the three months between January and March 2023.
This in turn led to an increase from 306 to 318, while Licensed Commercial FM radio stations increased from 180 to 190.
However, in the review period Cable TV Subscriptions declined by 4.1 percent to 57,004 while Direct to Home (DTH) subscriptions also dropped by 5266.
DTH are TV and broadcasting industries that deliver by satellite services directly to consumer households enabled by individual reception systems like antenna/dish and satellite Integrated Receiver-Decoder (IRD)/receiver
Those in Kenya include Azam, MultiChoice (DSTV) Star Times and Wananchi (Zuku).
“The total subscriptions to broadcasting services grew by 0.2 percent to a total of 6.205 million from 6.191 million reported during the preceding quarter,” reads the Communications Authority Q3 report
This is contrary to an earlier projection by Oxford university and Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism that singled out the media industry among the sectors that will be worst hit with the changing business models with more newspapers expected to stop daily print production this year.
The report projected that TV and broadcast news will be at the forefront of journalistic layoffs as audiences are hit by news fatigue and competition from streamers.
Perspectives from the Global Entertainment & Media Outlook 2023–2027 by Price Waterhouse Coopers (PwC) shows that the changing media landscape will continue to record reduced revenues.
It says that for the entertainment and media industries, 2022 marked an important inflection point.
The total global entertainment and media (E&M) revenue rose 5.4 percent in 2022, to US$2.32 trillion (Sh328 trillion) a deceleration from the 10.6 percent growth rate in 2021. And in each of the next five years, the rate of growth will decline sequentially, so that by 2027 revenue will grow just 2.8 percent from 2026.
