Citizen TV MD Explains How His Station Rose To The Top

Everyone knows that Citizen Television revolutionized the local scene in terms of local content. Apart from KBC, many of the stations around preferred to air international sitcoms and soap operas because they believed that that is what was hot so to say.

Wachira Waruru Citizen TV’s CEO in this 2011 youtube video, seeks to explain why Citizen turned over a new leaf. This was done by adopting content that reflected the local reality. He in this interview, explains the mechanisms put in place, and what it took to convince advertisers. He elucidates how they stuck it out in a bid to net advertising revenue, by waiting more than six months to build the kind of audiences needed to convince advertisers that there’s money in local programming. You have to watch the video to understand why Citizen went down this risky road.

The shocking bit was that for the first six months, there was barely any advertising for local content. Advertisers were wary of putting their money here until they saw reports that proved them wrong. Statistics don’t lie so they say, and it was the numbers that tipped the scale in local content’s favour. It’s laudable that Citizen had that stick-to-it-iveness attitude. He delves into the different programs like Papa Shirandula and Inspekta Mwala, and explains why they resonated with Kenyans. These, as opposed to desperate housewives et al, became popular over a nine month period and started to finally get the lion’s share of advertising revenue.

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