The Authority took this decision, among other raft of regulatory actions, after establishing that the TV channel, owned by Slopes Media House Ltd, had aired inappropriate content during the watershed period.
‘The Authority has established that the airing of the animated movie, Free Jimmy, was in blatant breach of the Broadcasting Regulations, the Programme Code, and the terms and conditions of the station’s broadcasting licence,” said the acting CA Director General Mrs. Wanjau in a press statement today.
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Mrs Wanjau said that the offensive programming was aired at a time when children were likely to be watching the broadcast unsupervised given that schools are closed and during a pandemic, which has limited other forms of entertainment.
The Communication Authority of Kenya has ordered the closure of a local television channel for a period of four weeks after the station aired explicit content on children s programmes.
The authority alleges that the Mount Kenya TV channel aired inappropriate content during the watershed period during which it aired sexually explicit content and scenes containing drug abuse as well as robbery and violence.
“The Licensee acknowledged that the content aired was indeed inappropriate for the watershed period. The licensee attributed the violation to a content mix-up in the control room but failed to explain how the offensive content had found its way into the content server,” read a statement from the authority boss Mercy Wanjau.
Communications Authority of Kenya (CA) center in Nairobi. PHOTO | SALATON NJAU
The Communication Authority of Kenya (CAK) Wednesday suspended Mt Kenya TV’s operations for a month for violating programming standards.
The Authority took this decision after it received complaints against the vernacular channel over the airing of inappropriate content last week.
Authority acting director-general Mercy Wanjau said the TV channel which is owned by Slopes Media House Ltd, had aired inappropriate content during the watershed period.
‘On April 19, 2021, at 2pm, during the ‘Mucii wa Ciina’ programme that featured an animated movie, the station aired sexually explicit content, drug abuse, robbery, and violence,” she said.
MultiChoice has echoed calls from the country’s public broadcaster, the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC), for South Africa’s current TV licence model to be eliminated favouring the implementation of a public broadcasting tax on households. However, the service operator has said it is opposed to the SABC’s proposal that subscription broadcasters be required to collect this levy from subscribers, arguing that the funds be collected by the SA Revenue Service (SARS).
“We believe the current TV licence model should be eradicated as it is outdated and not in line with international best practice,” MultiChoice spokesperson, Collen Dlamini told
The Bombay High Court on Monday in its 251-page judgement on a clutch of PILs regarding media trials in the Sushant Singh Rajput death case, observed that the media ought to avoid reports touching upon an ongoing investigation and present facts which are in public interest rather than what, according to the media, the public is interested in.
The division bench of Chief Justice Dipankat Dutta and Justice GS Kulkarni directed the print and electronic media to exercise restraint and refrain from publishing any news item, debate, discussion on interview while reporting on certain cases or at a particular stage of investigation (N