During the recent 'massacre' of talents at Mediamax Network Limited that saw over 150 employees rendered redundant across all its platforms that involve radio, TV, print and digital, Kameme TV scrapped its newsgathering function to reportedly focus more on entertainment.
The unprecedented move by the three-year-old Kikuyu TV station undoubtedly left tens of journalists and other support staff jobless but that is not our focus.
Here we would like to ask ourselves, will Kameme TV's shift of focus yield the desired results both in the short and the long run? Only time can tell.
What I would want to dwell at though, is, what may have culminated to the TV station opting for a different path away from the one it has come to be known for since its hyped launch in 2016?
Well, it requires no rocket science for one to tell that this move may have been informed by the failure of the initial strategy that could not work for the station after three years of stagnation.
This is evident in the many TV rating surveys that have failed to afford Kameme TV a slot among the top 10 TV stations in the country as its main competitor, Inooro TV, continues to feature strongly in the list at times even beating K24 TV, Kameme TV's sister national TV channel.
As such, what could have occasioned the perpetual poor ratings of the station that christen itself as the 'muthiigi wa ruriri' (pillar of the Agikuyu)? We enumerate below.
1. Lack of a solid market entry strategy
When Inooro TV launched one year ahead of Kameme TV, it found the Kikuyu TV market almost near saturation point but it managed to neutralize its pioneer rivals and cut a niche for itself which has continued to expand by time.
The simple explanation for this, is because the RMS Kikuyu TV station had a concrete strategy as opposed to Kameme TV which is seemingly still trying to find itself a place on the high table three years down the line.
2. Aping Inooro TV
When Kameme TV initial programming failed to excite the Kikuyu market, it resorted to aping Inooro TV programming forgetting that a copycat can never outdo the original. Kameme TV today airs dubbed Indian and Latin America telenovelas, something pioneered by Inooro TV.
3. Limited creativity
Kameme TV lacks creative programmes that are tailor-made to elicit its target audience's interest or those that seek to address its audience's day-to-day problems.
On the other hand, Inooro has many of such programmes like 'Ndagitari', 'Menya Watho' to mention but a few.
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