•Thursday, October 12, 2006
the rise and increase of fm radio stations in kenya is worth telling. gone are the days when tuning in to national broadcasters’ kbc english service with the likes of john karani was the signature of affluence. left, right centre -in all languages- into the villages and slums are wannabe fm stations with a moor of a following.
classic fm joined this fray less than two years ago and has carved its niche within the old and not so old folks. playing songs from the 70s and 80s, i can un-statistically say it’s the leading fm station in nairobi. its breakfast show is splendid, thanks to maina kageni and churchill who doubles up as the old timer teacher, mwalimu king’ang’i and the comical slum dwelling married tea girl, ‘philgonias’. i cant vouch for the truth of the last part of that statement. like all others in this post, i picked it up from the streets. but the two brighten up the morning. most homes, matatus and ‘personals’ have their dials at classic fm with the exception of those from limuru, kiambu and ruiru which settle for the second national language, kiuk based fm, rather kameme! interesting to note that in some sheng lingual ‘kubonga kameme’ means you are speaking kikuyu.
gone with the wind are the heydays of capital fm, kiss fm and nation fm with munene nyaga and ngatia. whoever thought of doing away with these two dudes made a silly business mistake. in its launch year, nation fm had a savvy political debate with a certain mama who always called in to spill the beans on key political figures then. i can’t remember her name, i think she was called nyawera. i think days when carol mutoko and nyambane used to rule the fm airwaves are quickly fading away. nyambane of redykulass is a shadow of his former comical self. nowadays he sounds shady and kiddish. maybe i have grown old, so I will keep up the judgmental attitude.
a major flop was the royal media’s y fm (also owns citizen tv and radio). y fm was established to cater for the so called forgotten generation of teenagers who wants to be choppy and hippie in all that they do. complete with a bunch of ‘teenie-attracting-celebs’ and sheng promoting talks, the station went on air only to redefine its target strategy before its second birthday. i think to effectively get to reach this age group you need to have the patience and resilience of a high school teacher. you need to be dangerously creative to blow their minds and make a business sense of such stations.
the set of presenters and programmes i miss most that have exited the fm drama is the kiss fm evening drive or something like that. it used to feature maina kageni (now in classic fm) and cess mutungi. those two were hilarious. cess’ hearty laughter would send spasms to the wrong places. i do miss classic fm’s parliament with jimmy gathu. i do miss kiss fm’s crossfire which featured mukhisa kituyi, mutula kilonzo and new raila stooge in central; tony gachoka.
in a bid to have our ears glued to the radio sets and with reduced listener attention spans, the fm programming has been taken to a new height all together. one of the tactics is to have ‘problem clinics’. as is well known, most problems have to do with male-female bonding so one can imagine the kind of sexy drama that has filed our airwaves. with new talent being sought and scouted, those already in those fms can’t live with the thought of being shown the door. show ratings counts and all have to be done to secure another show presentation tomorrow.
classic fm has the breakfast show seeking views on how to handle cooked up relationship case scenarios. kiss fm has its relationship problem solving during the evening drive, hope fm during its night show and some fms have sex education classes in the evening. and a host of others i don’t know. with the advent of mobile phones, the kind of talk and responses during these shows border from the ridiculous to explicit rated language. no problem with sex education since we need our wheel of life balanced. the x language is unacceptable which pushes the sane minds to shagzish citizen fm. and whats the ‘white-rush’ for white men with our ladies. there are quite good jamaas in the streets though i agree none fit the ‘white-rush’ bill. what with the artur brothers known to have cctv cameras in their bedrooms to capture the moments with our ‘white-rush’ prone celebs!
in one of these cases, a jamaa was blackmailed by a ‘hit and run’ convict live in one of the kiss fm shows shepherded by a kaleche mumo and shaffie weru. john saw the forbidden fruit, desired, borrowed and ate with his teeth well wrapped up. mary wanted john to own the whole fruit but john just needed a bite once in a while. that’s why with agreement with the lady he took the fruits wrapped so that he doesn’t leave his official stamp.
well, all was well until john decided not to be taking the bites coz the fruit was losing flavour according to him. after all, it was always implicit to both that the bites were for a time. the lady wanted the ‘for a time’ for life while john felt ‘for a time’ was while it all lasted within him. john had his say but not his way (thanks to martha karua for that wise statement).
mary, thanks to fm stations decides to have her way. she dials a number and the next thing john hears through his phone is that mary’s fruit got bloated during one of his constant bites. john says there was no way his poison could have caused damage coz he bit the guavas while his teeth had braces. mary replies through those two kiss fm clowns that it was true that the fruits were poisoned and she needs some money to clean them up lest she takes the matter to a higher level. john being a ‘nice’ man agrees to settle the cleaning bill on air, quite a sumptuous amount. he meets her the next day and hands over his month’s earning in exchange for his peace. that evening mary calls and says she got her revenge. john refuses to pick any more calls from the clowns and the soap ends.
classic fm joined this fray less than two years ago and has carved its niche within the old and not so old folks. playing songs from the 70s and 80s, i can un-statistically say it’s the leading fm station in nairobi. its breakfast show is splendid, thanks to maina kageni and churchill who doubles up as the old timer teacher, mwalimu king’ang’i and the comical slum dwelling married tea girl, ‘philgonias’. i cant vouch for the truth of the last part of that statement. like all others in this post, i picked it up from the streets. but the two brighten up the morning. most homes, matatus and ‘personals’ have their dials at classic fm with the exception of those from limuru, kiambu and ruiru which settle for the second national language, kiuk based fm, rather kameme! interesting to note that in some sheng lingual ‘kubonga kameme’ means you are speaking kikuyu.
gone with the wind are the heydays of capital fm, kiss fm and nation fm with munene nyaga and ngatia. whoever thought of doing away with these two dudes made a silly business mistake. in its launch year, nation fm had a savvy political debate with a certain mama who always called in to spill the beans on key political figures then. i can’t remember her name, i think she was called nyawera. i think days when carol mutoko and nyambane used to rule the fm airwaves are quickly fading away. nyambane of redykulass is a shadow of his former comical self. nowadays he sounds shady and kiddish. maybe i have grown old, so I will keep up the judgmental attitude.
a major flop was the royal media’s y fm (also owns citizen tv and radio). y fm was established to cater for the so called forgotten generation of teenagers who wants to be choppy and hippie in all that they do. complete with a bunch of ‘teenie-attracting-celebs’ and sheng promoting talks, the station went on air only to redefine its target strategy before its second birthday. i think to effectively get to reach this age group you need to have the patience and resilience of a high school teacher. you need to be dangerously creative to blow their minds and make a business sense of such stations.
the set of presenters and programmes i miss most that have exited the fm drama is the kiss fm evening drive or something like that. it used to feature maina kageni (now in classic fm) and cess mutungi. those two were hilarious. cess’ hearty laughter would send spasms to the wrong places. i do miss classic fm’s parliament with jimmy gathu. i do miss kiss fm’s crossfire which featured mukhisa kituyi, mutula kilonzo and new raila stooge in central; tony gachoka.
in a bid to have our ears glued to the radio sets and with reduced listener attention spans, the fm programming has been taken to a new height all together. one of the tactics is to have ‘problem clinics’. as is well known, most problems have to do with male-female bonding so one can imagine the kind of sexy drama that has filed our airwaves. with new talent being sought and scouted, those already in those fms can’t live with the thought of being shown the door. show ratings counts and all have to be done to secure another show presentation tomorrow.
classic fm has the breakfast show seeking views on how to handle cooked up relationship case scenarios. kiss fm has its relationship problem solving during the evening drive, hope fm during its night show and some fms have sex education classes in the evening. and a host of others i don’t know. with the advent of mobile phones, the kind of talk and responses during these shows border from the ridiculous to explicit rated language. no problem with sex education since we need our wheel of life balanced. the x language is unacceptable which pushes the sane minds to shagzish citizen fm. and whats the ‘white-rush’ for white men with our ladies. there are quite good jamaas in the streets though i agree none fit the ‘white-rush’ bill. what with the artur brothers known to have cctv cameras in their bedrooms to capture the moments with our ‘white-rush’ prone celebs!
in one of these cases, a jamaa was blackmailed by a ‘hit and run’ convict live in one of the kiss fm shows shepherded by a kaleche mumo and shaffie weru. john saw the forbidden fruit, desired, borrowed and ate with his teeth well wrapped up. mary wanted john to own the whole fruit but john just needed a bite once in a while. that’s why with agreement with the lady he took the fruits wrapped so that he doesn’t leave his official stamp.
well, all was well until john decided not to be taking the bites coz the fruit was losing flavour according to him. after all, it was always implicit to both that the bites were for a time. the lady wanted the ‘for a time’ for life while john felt ‘for a time’ was while it all lasted within him. john had his say but not his way (thanks to martha karua for that wise statement).
mary, thanks to fm stations decides to have her way. she dials a number and the next thing john hears through his phone is that mary’s fruit got bloated during one of his constant bites. john says there was no way his poison could have caused damage coz he bit the guavas while his teeth had braces. mary replies through those two kiss fm clowns that it was true that the fruits were poisoned and she needs some money to clean them up lest she takes the matter to a higher level. john being a ‘nice’ man agrees to settle the cleaning bill on air, quite a sumptuous amount. he meets her the next day and hands over his month’s earning in exchange for his peace. that evening mary calls and says she got her revenge. john refuses to pick any more calls from the clowns and the soap ends.
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10 comments:
Your post is so so so on point!
The thing with Y FM is that they started out really really well, they had a good niche audience but they decided to fix what wasnt broken and paid dearly for it!
The Nyambane and Carol combi is old and needs something new.
Nation did really mess up by doing away with the crazy threesome.
I do miss Cess too!She was at her best when she started as a late night presenter at Nation and was pretty good at Capital.Right now I dont know if she is any good at all.
I have not had the priviledge of listening to all the explicit talk as it is only Capital that streams online.
Damn! I would have liked to hear that drama unfold on the call in session!
Is there any fm station that caters to only talk absolutely no music?
In a country where people do more talk than work i think this maybe an idea someone can capitalize on.
Topics on Politics, Sports , Development , Education...
I think people would eat it up big time.
Try this channel if you have time some shows you have to grow into being american and all.
1053freefm.com
Y FM in trying to cater to that young 14-24 year old demographic forgot one thing: They have no disposable income.
All the stations now are basically fighting for a slice of the same market: the 23-45 year old upwardly mobile folk.
I wonder what the rest of the country thinks of Capital, Kiss and the like.
I do believe Cess has teamed up with some Josiah dude on Y FM now called something or the other.
I absolutely abhor those therapy sessions, remember one Oyunga Pala used to have that session on Capital late nite. It was so full of drama paka guys accused him of faking the calls. Nini wacera should be locked in a circular room and told to sit in the corner....
Crossfire was good when it was hosted by patrick and did not have all the shouting and screaming it does now, The host- paul Elado is sooo clueless you can literally picture him cowering in the corner due to all the shouting...
Personally except for Maina I don't like any of the others. But I do miss Edward Kwatch and maina Combi
felt like puking everytime i chanced upon YFM.glad that they folded up and anyway its was astupid business idea.and by the way KISSFM spoils good songs by their endless repetition of the same
Maina Kageni and Mwalimu King'ang'i really rock with their problem clinic in the morning though most of the time they are too explicit for the younger audience.
Nyambane needs to revamp his persona it is so many years since he made his debut.
@acolyte, the thing about macharia, the owner of royal media which owns y fm is that he is a risk taker. i can bet he was warned about y fm and decided to go ahead and try it. well, there are those who have money on the side to go to tour space while strapped on their seats and back and not feel coin loss.
@anon, no there are no such fm stations. coming to think of it it could be a hit though kenyans may get lethargic after a while.
@makanga, true that disposable income counts when considering your market niche.
another failure is the all-reggae station metro fm. how do they make money from such poor broadcasting. jairo at kiss fm reggae show and talia oyando's at easy fm (nation fm) reggae shows are much hotter.
@halfnhalf, so something like that in the papers but ahvent yet followed up on it. wouldn't mind listening to her again.
i would like to know how nini wacera is when she is not in the limelight. she got drama! its a form of branding i guess.
@anon, kiss fm calls themselves the fresh hits station but as you noted they made those hits stale in a week. but i like it the way they blend their selection with local music though i hear they are biased towards one producer.
@prousette, you would never have thought maina would be that good at a breakfast show.
yeah nyambane needs to take a break and reevaluate his career. their red korna shows aint as interesting as before. well, they may be too familiar within kenyans mind. well wishes to kj as he ties the knot this saturday.
S.K. Macharia (Royal Media) had to change tack and target the yuppies since what makes money for a radio station is advertising. Teens have no purchasing power and S.K. was hard pressed to explain to advertisers why they should pay to advertise to that audience. It has worked apparently and he is raking in revenue!
@aegeus, i think the teenie-model didnt work and thats why those presenters were replaced.
xfm rocks in kenya