In Summary
- Risk Digital Broadcast Signals Distributors can determine content relayed to public
- On Monday night and most of the day Tuesday, leading television stations — NTV, KTN and Citizen — went off air after media houses lost the fight to delay the switch to the digital format.
Even as the government pushes ahead with digital migration, it is doubtful whether adequate awareness has been created among the public to understand the underlying costs associated with the switch from the analogue format.
On Monday night and most of the day Tuesday, leading television stations — NTV, KTN and Citizen — went off air after media houses lost the fight to delay the switch to the digital format.
It now appears that they will go off air again after Thursday, a date which the government has set for the migration to digital in Nairobi and its surrounding areas.
The Nation Media Group, the Standard Media Group and Royal Media Services have gone the whole length to delay the migration, given the underlying costs and inconvenience to viewers.
Take the first phase of migration to the digital platform which involves Nairobi and its surrounding areas.
There are approximately 1.4 million television sets within this region whose owners have been consuming news and programmes on the analogue platform.
The only cost of keeping abreast with daily news, events happening elsewhere in the world and being entertained by a variety of TV programmes has been the price of the TV set, an aerial and of course, electricity costs that are part of house hold bills.
This is why they are called Free to Air Terrestrial Broadcasters. Put simply, this means that their broadcast content ought to be relayed and received by the ultimate viewer at no cost to that viewer.
The technology which drives most televisions in Kenya is such that they cannot receive the Digital Signals. It is estimated that a huge majority of the Television sets in Kenyan homes are analogue in technical design and cannot receive the Digital Distributions signals.
With the switch, each of these TV sets is going to require a set-top box for the digital signal to avoid being plunged in total darkness. Each top box costs Sh5,000 on the local market, meaning that Nairobi residents are going to part with Sh7 billion.
The usual design of Set Top Boxes is that they are meant to receive all such free to air signals for which the viewer is not meant to make payment.
LIMITED TO SPECIFIC CHANNELS
In the Kenyan case, however, the Set Top Boxes in the market have been specifically designed by the Digital Signal Distributors to limit themselves to specific channels and not all free to air channels.
Majority of these residents are parents who are struggling to raise fees for their pupils and students in early January, just days away. They are now loaded with the cost of staying connected.
Of course there are arguments that Pay TV stations have been offering a cheaper option of set-top boxes, retailing at Sh3,000. Even if this was the option, still it will cost Sh4.2 billion for all TV sets to be migrated to the new platform.
One catch here which Pay TV stations have been silent about is that you will only remain switched on the digital platform for one month after which you will be required to pay monthly bills or you are disconnected.
In contrast, once you buy your set-top box of Sh5,000 you will incur no further costs.
Costs aside, the government, in its push, has not taken stock of the total number of Set Top Boxes currently on the local market. Are there enough boxes to satisfy the needs of 1.4 million TV sets to migrate to the digital platform?
So far, a survey by the media houses shows that only 200,000 Set Top Boxes have been sold so far by dealers in preparation for digital platform era.
A further 400,000 are still in stock, meaning that only 600,000 TV sets will be paired against the Set Top Boxes — assuming that people will buy them all — once the Communications Commission of Kenya switches off those still on analogue format in Nairobi and its environs.
This also means that 800,000 TV sets will automatically be switched off once the CCK migrates to digital broadcast in the Nairobi region.
Under these circumstances, why can’t the migration be staggered until adequate set-top boxes have been imported to meet the demand arising out of digital migration?
NOT OPPOSED TO DIGITAL MIGRATION
The issue here is not about opposing digital broadcast, but setting out an implementation schedule which will not inconvenience TV owners with additional costs and news blackouts.
In their Petition filed in Court by the three mentioned media houses, it was contended that the original date for the switch over to Digital broadcasting in Nairobi and the rest of the country generally needed to be scheduled in a more coordinated fashion to avoid the risk of locking out the majority of Kenyans from accessing their rights to information through the television broadcast services.
Moreover, the digital migration has introduced a third party in transmission of news — a signal distributor. In the analogue era, each media house had its own signal, meaning that no third party could either interfere or manipulate the quality and depth of news broadcasts to viewers.
Under the new arrangement, TV stations will prepare their news content and hand it over the to the signal distributor for transmission.
The cost bit aside, it means that the news you view in your sitting room may not carry with it the original quality and the depth as the media houses intended.
The main concern by the media establishments in seeking their own broadcast licence is the risk of having third-parties, that is the Digital Broadcast Signals Distributors, determine what content may be relayed to the public.
The technological link between a content producer and the Signal Distributor under the Digital structure is such that a Digital Distributor could literally decline to broadcast the content to the public and thereby undermine the freedom of the content originator.
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