One of the fastest rising careers in Kenya is radio presenter/news anchor position. Gone are the days when presenters and news anchors used to be paid peanuts. Many presenters and news anchors now rake in six figure incomes. One of the reasons for this is that the Kenyan media industry is one of the most financially viable and liberal in the continent. Companies are spreading billions of shillings in order to promote their products. This therefore improves the profitability of the media companies. In essence, media companies are now effectively merchandisers and marketers, helping sell an array of products.(<tag>Breaking news in Kenya)
Thus, it is easy to see why careers in the media industry are lucrative. Presenters/news anchors such as Caroline Mutoko, Jeff Koinange among others have become opinion shapers in Kenya’s socio economic scenes. Perhaps, what attracts young people most to the media careers in Kenya is the glamour and lifestyle that media people are perceived to have. Add to the fact that the term presenter /news/anchor most of the time overlaps with being a celebrity. In fact, many young people are willing to go to great lengths in order to be famous. A worrying trend though is that the same faces keep being migrating from one station to another hence curtailing the growth of talent for the industry. In their defense though, it takes quite a time for a presenter to build a fan base and many radio and TV companies are not ready to take such a risk. Advertising revenues have a direct correlation with the size of audience that a station can attract. Many of the times, a presenter usually moves with his/her fan base to another station and provided that the station has the right support base, the advertising revenues will keep on coming. On a sad note though, young talented journalists may really find it hard to break into many of Kenya’s TV and radio stations.
Thanks for a summary of what it looks like on the ground in the media industry in kenya, better than all the speculations and percieved thoughts of what it must be like..
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