How Nation Media Group Allegedly Double-Crossed The Star In A 90 Million Deal

We’ve been running a series on William Pike and Patrick Quarcoo’s mindspeak session. So far, we’ve seen that Classic 105, KISS 100 and co. make over 800 million a month, and that Radio Africa once tried to buy out the Standard newspaper, so now here is the story of how Nation Media Group double-crossed the Star newspaper(a product of Radio Africa):

According to William Pike, “When we did start the Star, we were going to do a more downmarket paper, and the Nation was printing us. Now, Uganda is a gentlemanly kind of country in my view. If you get robbed by a thief, they don’t hit you with a panga. They just take your money, say thank you and they leave. Here you get whacked with a panga.”

Will went on, “So, the Nation, they were printing us… we actually paid them a million dollars last year for printing. What did they do? A month after printing, they launched the Metro to try and put us out of business. Their customer. This is the sort of ruthless dog-eat-dog side of Kenya that I think is unhealthy. But, it was good for us because as soon as they launched the Metro, Patrick said that we will not be able to survive with these guys. We’ve got to raise extra money from our shareholders to buy a printing press.”

On the printing press acquisition, William Pike stated:

“We went to India, and we ordered a printing press, and we now have our own printing press. All the Indians were astonished. ‘You let your competitor print you? You must be mad!’ Lesson from India!”

To conclude, he said, “Our total investment in the Star has now been something like 3 million dollars. This has been a low cost business. The cost of the printing press has been about 1.75 million dollars. The Standard’s total cost of a new printing press and offices has been about 20 million dollars. If you look at the print quality of the Nation or Standard compared to the Star, I’d honestly say we have got the best print quality.”