Four Kenyan TV stations that went off air in protest at the government regulations of digital migration, have resume full broadcast after getting a new lease of life.
The owners of the private owned TV stations finally reached a deal with the government that has allowed them to go back on air.
The four stations, KTN, QTV, NTV and Citizen TV, shut down their signals both the analogue and digital one in protest at the government’s digital migration policy.
The main bone of contention was that they were opposed to pay TV service providers showing their content without their consent.
The stations have now reached an agreement with the government after three weeks of being off air.
On 13th of February, 2015, the Kenyan Supreme Court ruled that the timeline for analogue switch-off as scheduled by the Communications Authority of Kenya will remain. It ordered the stations to switch off their analogue signals on the same date.
Three weeks after the shut down, the four stations finally reached a deal in which they would broadcast their content to owners of free-to-air set top boxes through their self provisioning digital platform – African Digital Networks.
They also wrote to the Communications Authority of Kenya (CA) demanding that if pay-TV service providers such as GoTv, StarTimes and Zuku want to carry their content, they will have to first seek authorization from them.
Their aim is to have the pay-TV operators either agree to paying for the content or agree not to switch off subscribers who default on the monthly payments, which should come as good news to television viewers with free-to-air set top boxes as they will now have lots of content to choose from.
