DStv TO RENUMBER CHANNELS, ADD BOX OFFICE

In Accra and in Nairobi tonight, DStv is set to unveil a new numbering of channels with related content being on adjacent channels - e.g. FTA channels like Citizen, NTV, KTN, K24 ideally following each other, while movies, Africa Magic and so on will all be regrouped to make it easier for viewers to navigate.

During the unveiling, Multichoice will also announce new High-Definition channels that have been added to its bouquets including Box Office which will be available for premium subscribers and where latest release movies will be shown before gradually being moved to the other bouquets.

A table laid out at the Golden Tulip Hotel in Ghana DStv event

The use of HD channels is meant to create more room for more content.

This will also allow for content of the same genre say romantic movies to be grouped together and so on.

Multichoice is moving aggressively to protect its turf as new challengers enter its African markets.

Tonight's launch is also expected to directly address issues of content including program repeats and dated movies that were sparked of by this Blog Post.

WHERE ARE GTV & SMART TV? DSTV COMPLAINTS NOT JUSTIFIED

While unconfirmed reports have it that the posters of letter in  Ghafla Kenya A Hilarious open letter to DsTv and Multichoice later went to Multichoice demanding that the company advertises with them, it is interesting that a rival platform was very keen to jump on the tweetfeed and FB comments generated to market itself and call for people to migrate to them, never mind a month or two ago they were under similar siege.

I've read the post and while some of the issues raised may be genuine, I think Kenyans also want too much for too little. That or rivals are now using trolls to malign other brands online.

Bottom line is, for those who remember embracing GTV and Smart TV, you do have to run a sustainable business model to survive and secondly, it is important to benchmark a brand against best practices elsewhere.

For starters, when it comes to international channels such as Discovery, E! Entertainment, Nat Geo and so on, these are pass through channels that re-transmit content as it comes without repackaging.

So the Discovery World and Nat Geo as you see them here is how they are seen on other continents.

Indeed, when the same issue was raised by DStv subscribers about repeat of marathons in South Africa, the matter was referred to Discovery Channel folks who responded as follows:

"There are usually marathons at the weekend on Discovery World which tend to work quite well.

We would like to give all viewers a chance to see the whole series if they miss the first or second episode hence the repeat of Biblical Mysteries series last Sunday.

The omnibus was repeated twice since different viewers tune in at 6am and at midday. It might happen that some heavy viewers will see the same episode more than once especially with mini-series marathons.

We appreciate the feedback and will take it into consideration when planning marathons on Discovery World in the future."

According to Multichoice, when it comes to acquiring these channels:

"Essentially, MultiChoice does not create the channels it broadcasts. This also means that we do not have direct editorial control over the channel schedules and content."

Secondly, on complaints about the content on channels like Africa Magic and Africa Swahili Magic: We are not producing enough local content that can be aired n these shows. There is no point in complaining about the repeat of TZ movies on Swahili Magic or Naija and SA movies and shows yet we are not producing our own content to compete.

Multichoice has in fact been pushing for people with local content to come forward it is willing to support it. 

Multichoice has two content producers: (Electronic Media Network) MNET and Supersport.

On each at least it has tried to assist in content development on the continent. MNEt has Africa Magic channels while Supersport now shows local football league matches.

Recently, the Multichoice Nairobi office was upgraded to a regional hub overseeing 10 countries as the company scales up the push for local content.

And as much as competition is good in the market place resulting in better products and pricing, at least Multichoice has been consistent.

Gushing over new entrants has seen GTV and Smart TV converts burn in the end only to leave DStv in the market.

So as far as reliability, the company still has reputational currency and will probably be trusted more than a newer flashy rival.

How the market plays out we are yet to see but wholesale criticism of brands without taking time to understand the business models behind them (GTV and Smart clearly showed the wrong market and pricing strategy will burn you) is disingenuous.

Kiptiness vs Wangusi for CCK's top job

The highly political and precarious position of the Director-General of the Communications Commission of Kenya is set to be filled after acting DG Francis Wangusi, CCK legal head John Omo and former CCK and Telkom Kenya lawyer Stephen Kiptiness were all short-listed for the job.

The previous CCK boss Charles Njoroge left in acrimonious circumstances after falling out with the board. It is suspected that powerful interests both in the telecommunications industry and in the Media conspired to see his removal for threatening their interests.

The post will be filled at a time when serious issues have to be addressed:

One, digital migration is about to take place and the billions at stake have seen the war over customers rise to a whole new level - expected to even go higher as Multichoice and Startimes Digital rush to roll out services across the country.

Simple mathematics - we have about 4million TV sets in this country. Each of those, theoretically, should have Digital set top box.

Set top boxes go for anywhere from Sh3000 - 7000. Working with the lower figure, 3000 by 4million sets....You get the picture.

Related, is the issue of frequencies - Njoroge fought with broadcasters because he sought to repossess frequencies that were issued under dubious circumstances in the first place and that media owners wanted to retain control of upon digital migration.

You see, one frequency yields 18 digital channels. The likes of Royal Media, Radio Africa and Nation Media Group want to retain control of these channels when they migrate but authorities have insisted that everyone will be allocated channels according to the content they can produce. A battle royale awaits the potential DG here.

Elections are also coming up and certain regulations, including those covering hate speech, the internet and social media are likely to be pushed so again the DG has his work cut out for him.

Not to mention, the issue of switching off bogus handsets and blocking unregistered SIM cards is also underway and again powerful interests will seek to sway the process.

Then the mother of them all, the issue of Mobile Termination Rates (MTRs). The last time CCK brought them down, Airtel unleashed a price war on the market that turned the market upside down and forced all other operators to bring their prices down too.

CCK has been seeking to bring these MTRs down further but telcos notably Safaricom and Orange have been against the idea.

That being said, who stands the best chance to be DG?

Francis Wangusi

Francis Wangusi (pictured right) has the inside lane - He has already been acting, and has, at least till now, not ruffled any feathers.

He is likely to be seen as safe and most likely lobbyists will push Information minister Samuel Poghisio, to appoint him.

John Omo who last time lost out to Charles Njoroge is on the short list but one would think he would have been chosen to act in Njoroge's absence but he was not. That is telling.

Stephen Kiptiness, is as sharp as they come, and is a look-you-in-the-eye straight forward kind of guy. He knows his stuff but the fact that he has been away from CCK for some time might work against him.

He was the Legal Head at Telkom Kenya and would probably make the best DG from the country's perspective.

As an outsider some things Kiptiness could probably be relied on to do is to come up with a proper spectrum allocation policy, at TKL he always railed against CCK for dragging its feet on this.

He could possibly come down hard on Safaricom being one of the TKL brass who believed that Safaricom rode on TKL's infrastructure to become what it became. But on the other hand, TKL and Safaricom had come to agree on some things, like the need to halt the reduction in MTRs.

All said, it is most likely Wangusi will take the job. Kiptiness could well be a future DG.

BARCLAYS PUSHES ATM, MOBILE BANKING

We speakin' billions!

Adan Mohammed wants you to use ATM's and do mobile banking to save on costs associated with visiting the branch to do transactions. That was the message the suave CEO gave at the investor briefing held at the Intercontinental Hotel to report the bank's half-year earnings for the period ended 30th June 2012.

The numbers were good. On the back of high interest rates, BBK raked in Sh6.3billion in profits before taxes for the six months to end of June. Compared to a similar period last year when it reported Sh5.3billion,  growth in this regard was 18 per cent.

It did this by holding costs down. BBK did not accept expensive deposits and therefore it did not have fork out large interest payments on deposits.

In the year, Adan informed investors, BBK did Sh40billion of new lending. Their loan book now stands at Sh101billion. Most of this is strictly prudential lending with the bank emphasizing risk management.

Indeed, room for growth is ample - the bank is capitalized to the tune of Sh27billion meaning theoretically it can lend up to 10 times that (Sh270billion) yet it has only put out Sh101bn.

BBK is now ranked third in profitability at the half-year mark after KCB (Sh8.5billion) and Equity Bank (Sh7.6billion). The bank lost its position as the most profitable in the country last year as aggressive expansion and customer recruitment at the two local banks yielded fruit.

To keep costs down, BBK is emphasizing ATM and mobile banking. One of the ways they have done this is by eliminating ATM transaction fees. 

They have also launched Hallo mobile banking allowing you to transact via mobile and this is a service you can register to from the screen of your phone without having to go to the bank.

Going forward, Adan said the continued imbalance between what Kenyans are importing and what they export is likely to put pressure on the shilling so in other words, the shilling could weaken in the coming months. 

ERICSSON/ALCATEL BATTLE FOR KENYA'S 4G NETWORK

Ericsson has shocked government types and telecom players by proposing to build a country-wide 4G network for free threatening to scuttle a consortium of the Safaricoms and Airtels of this world and equipment makers Siemens and Alcatel-Lucent that has won the right to build the network.

Ericsson had slept during tendering and missed out on bidding. Only after a consortium of 10 players (Safaricom, Airtel, Orange, Essar (yu), KDN, MTN, Siemens, Alcatel-Lucent, Epesi Communications and the Kenya government) won the tender did Ericsson wake up.

Essentially, the consortium, through a special purpose vehicle that has received approval from Treasury, is to set up an escrow account where the shareholders will deposit their contributions to the project.

The exact cost is yet to be established although a preliminary figure of US$100million (Sh8.4billion) had been floated for the first phase of the project.

The telcos will presumably also provide their masts and base stations under a shared-infrastructure model while the equipment makers will agree on how to roll out the network. (an initial agreement between Alcatel and Siemens was dismissed as unworkable as they wanted to halve the work essentially building a network that is half Alcatel and half Siemens. They are now said to be seeking a better working formula).

Ericsson now wants to crash the party. It is saying it can foot the bill for the entire project and repay itself over 15 years or so. It argues that rather than ask telcos and taxpayers to come up with cash for the project, it can bank roll the project and then operate the network.

Ericsson it trying to team up with one of the consortium members, Epesi Communications, which touts itself as an American outfit, although Google searches for it yield preciously little and is said to be fronted by a Kenyan going by the name of Munene.

Predictably, Alcatel-Lucent and Siemens are against this as they will stand to lose lucrative supply deals.


Africa being the fastest growing mobile market in the world has attracted all the major infrastructure companies from Ericsson to Siemens, Nokia, Alcatel-Lucent, Huawei, ZTE and so on.


Huawei and ZTE have suffered because they have very close relationships with two of the telcos in the country, Safaricom for Huawei and Orange for ZTE. As such, the other consortium members do not fancy them in the mix.

But this is the kind of issue that finds its way to parliament and suddenly accusations of government spending money when an offer to have the entire network built with no money upfront is on the table.

There is no word as to whether Ericsson's bid will be taken seriously or what their next move is but indications are that their offer has been rebuffed for now with the polite reminder that they did not participate in the bidding round.

Another unhappy camper is Safaricom. The listed telecom would have loved to roll out the network on its own but spectrum constraints cannot allow this.

It is also unhappy that KDN and MTN could use the new network to offer voice services according to people in the know.

Also, the network will be on an open access model meaning even those entities that are not part of the consortium can lease capacity on the network but essentially, it also means that all operators will have the same coverage countrywide when it comes to 4G.

4G's main beneficiary is video in the same way 3G is data and 2G voice. By 2020, it is expected that 5G technology will be rolling out with much of data traffic expected to come from smart devices like home appliances rather than phones and tablets. IPv6 will allow billions of devices to have their own IP addresses.

The escrow account for the consortium was to be opened this week.

THIEVING QUACK JOURNALIST UNMASKED VIA SOCIAL MEDIA

The reported Luke Githinji

A thieving quack who lifted an iPad at a BPO function recently was unmasked on social media yesterday.

After his picture was circulated to media houses and subsequently on the net, one Robert Alai, not known to mince words wrote:

Robert Alai ‏@RobertAlai

The iPad thief highlighted in this blog post is called Luke Githinji. His number is 0712978119 http://bit.ly/KxuJzI - RT Pls

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•  Reply 
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As of writing this post, there had been 29 retweets including by the Kenya Police official twitter account.

 Left is the picture he uses on Facebook. Given by his account, this must be when he graduated from the Kenya Institute of Media and Technology, yeah, I know you are asking (Where the hell is that?)

I don't know.

The man's motives aside, the bigger issue here that needs to be addressed is the growing armies of quacks who invade functions sometimes outnumbering guests and end up either stealing, extorting money, drinking themselves silly or basically making the journalism fraternity look bad.

Shown there is a screenshot of Mr. Githinji's Facebook page. 

He seems a recent entrant, or an introvert. He has 69 friends.

QUACKS

The business journalism field is the worst hit by this problem.

Nowadays, genuine reporters at a function will normally make up about 30 per cent, the rest being unknowns who give no value to the host and end up demanding favours for work not delivered. Some have become well known and perhaps it is time that the fraternity did what the political desks did some years back.

To hear it from veterans, two notorious quacks had taken to impersonating legit political journalists, appearing at functions and extorting politicians in other people's names.

THE UNMASKING

Then, social media was not around to unhood the likes of our friend Luke. The politicos decided to use another tactic. 

At different subsequent functions, camera men and photographers were asked to train their lenses on the two and make sure they got good shots. 

When they were sure they had enough footage, they put together a story to be aired and ran cautioning on two masqueraders roaming the town.

The two fellas promptly went underground.

BUSINESS PRESS, CLIENTS AND PR AGENCIES

There is need now, for action to be taken and it has to be done in concert with the three most affected parties, the business desks, clients they cover and the agencies who bring the two together.

A collaborative effort to unmask these quacks and circulate their pictures and profiles both to clients, and PR agencies and to the police if necessary is needed to clean up the industry and restore the good name of the business press.

Over to you!

SAFARICOM TAGS OGILVY, TELL-EM, APEX AND SILVER BULLET FOR PR ACCOUNT

Ogilvy Kenya, Tell-Em, Apex Porter Novelli and Silver Bullet have been shortlisted to pitch for Safaricom's Sh2million a month PR & Events account.

Gina Din CC which has handled the account for the last decade opted not to bid for it as CEO Gina Din-Kariuki focuses her attention on specialized international clients and also prepares to play in the Oil and Gas sector with her appointment as the local partner of CAMAC Energy, an explorer with several off-shore blocks in Kenya.

Head to head, Ogilvy seems to tower over the others given the accounts it handles, it personnel and the fact that its a Scanad brand.

It has big clients such as Kenya Airways, Kenya Tourist Board, UAP Insurance, Tullow Oil and KCB and some of its personnel like Catherine Karanja, Tony Kago, Esther Sserwanga, Duncan Ondigo and so on have several years experience in corporate advisory work and other client services.

Others like Henry Ndirangu and King'ori Choto are newsroom veterans turned communications specialists while Francis Ochieng' and Nick Thiong'o are ex-Gina Din CC staff and have worked with Safaricom in the past.

But without doubt the biggest question mark with be the exit of Ogilvy MD Okoth "JJ" Obado from the helm of the firm he has led since 2004. JJ who commands fierce loyalty from his staff is known for his style of letting his employees "work."

"When he gives you a job, he gives you a job," said one. Yet another: "He is a leader." 

That he will be exiting is one thing, that his replacement will be Nick Wachira, the outgoing Managing Editor of the East African will no doubt raise eyebrows.

Where J is praised for his people management skills, Wachira is not. In fact, the opposite is said to be the case and that he is difficult to work with. Nonetheless, he does get results having launched the Daily Nation pullouts, Smart Company and Money some years back, the Business Daily as first Managing Editor and now at East African.

The firm has had a very low attrition rate at the top (only Anthony Mwangi- previously Head of Clients Services and now Obado have left) and will be watched closely for any if at all, departures after this.

Tell-Em PR, associated with former Information Minister Mutahi Kagwe, has not been as visible as it used to be in the past when Emily Kaiga (now Head of Communications - Standard Chartered Bank) used to represent the likes of Nokia.

But it is still no pushover and its impressive array of accounts is testament to that - Visa, Intel, Brookside, General Electric, Chartis Insurance, Sameer, Pine Bridge Investments and so on.

It also gave Safaricom its current PR Manager, Ann Nderi.

Apex Porter Novelli is quite surprising in this list as it has tended to go for public sector contracts and has represented the Ministry of Planning, Kenya Census 2009, the East African Community, Unilever, USAID and so on.

Known as Apex Communications in the past it became a network partner to global communications firm Porter Novelli.

Silver Bullet on the other hand is no sleeper although it has lost some veteran names recently. It represents the likes of Coop Bank, Ecobank, Toyota, APA Insurance, Jetlink and so on.

It however lost the highly effective Lilian Nganda to Hill and Knowlton, a brand that has acquired some of the best upcoming PR minds recently, and Sylvia Luseno to Media Edge. Brenda Khaimia, another of the Silver Bullet girls left to join Blueprint.

It is surprising that some firms are not on this shortlist.

Hill and Knowlton, probably the best positioned to handle this job given it not only has two seasoned Safaricom handlers in Rodgers Wabito and Cedric Lumiti but it has done a much better job of replacing departures of the likes of Solomon Mahinda chose not to pitch.

It has in addition to Nganda, hired former Apex, AccessKenya and Scanad PR's Michele Anekeya and has a large pool of upcoming PR minds.

Equally impressive is Africa Practice with an illustrious list of clients such as Google, Research In Motion, Multichoice, Diageo, CNN and so on and a number of seasoned PR minds such as Joan Kiambati and Mukami Muriuki and has recently tapped the talents of Capital FM Business Editor Evelyn Njoroge.