TV stations fail to meet children’s content quotas

Most local broadcasters are not meeting quotas set by the industry regulator on children’s television programming, according to new data from the government.

In the quarter to September 2017, the Communications Authority of Kenya (CA) found that only 7.8 per cent or four out of the 51 TV stations were complying with the guideline requiring at least five hours of programming per week to be set aside for children’s shows.

The CA noted that this was a decline from the 10.4 per cent of broadcasters who were complying in the previous quarter and attributed the trend to the election season, which saw the airwaves filled with current and political affairs programming.

“The majority of the stations shifted from normal programming lineup to include more current affairs and election analysis programming, which resulted in lower airtime allocated to children programming,” says the CA.

READ: Radio, TV stations face tough content rules from July

The agency also acknowledges that the “cost implications” associated with complying with the five-hour standard for children’s programming could be prohibitive.

There is also a trend where broadcasters are focusing on niche programming which, more often than not, “may not be children-oriented”.

The CA studied 51 stations in the survey. Out of these, eight were airing at least 100 minutes, or just under two hours, of children’s programming every week.

The agency however noted a significant improvement in local content provision with the percentage of television stations that complied with the 40 per cent quota rising from 66.7 per cent in June 2017 to 82.4 per cent in September 2017.