Nation Media Group in Trouble

mzeiya

mzeiya

Elder Lister
A funny yet poignant joke goes something like,

"If you bought 2,941 Nation media group shares worth KES 1M in January 2014, your shares are now worth KES 44,500. If you took 2 beers @180 every day without fail since then, you would have Ksh. 156,880 remaining."

Seems like many other media companies globally, the rate of IT especially on the news front has overtaken their innovation. That can only be bad news such as this article today by Kenyan Wallstreet...

Decline in Advertising & Newspaper Sales Pushes NMG’s Net Profit Down 94% to KSh 48 Million

Miriam Wangui 9 hours Ago
Nation_1600x900.jpg

Nation Media Group has reported a drastic fall in net profit for the year that ended on 31st December 2020. Its net profit dropped to KSh48 million from KSh856 million in 2019, equivalent to a 94.4% decline.

Government restrictions and other effects of the covid19 pandemic severely affected the biggest media company in East Africa. The company recorded a sharp decline in advertising revenue and income from the sale of newspapers also fell dramatically. Nation Media Group’s revenue decreased to KSh6.81 billion from KSh9.05 billion the year before.

Nonetheless, the media company registered notable growth in digital subscriptions in the period under review. In July, the company launched a new digital brand, Nation.Africa which it expects to drive long-term profitability.

In a press statement, Nation Media Group said, “Going forward, the Group will focus on building on the early gains from its digital transformation initiatives through further investment in our journalism and diversification of our digital products offerings while upholding its strong position in the print and broadcast media sectors”.

The value of the firm’s total assets decreased to KSh11.82 billion at the end of 2020 from KSh12.1 billion at the end of 2019. Its total liabilities also fell to KSh3.89 billion from KSh 4.3 billion the previous year.

Nation Media Group, in a rare move, failed to declare a dividend payment for the financial year 2020.
 
Mwalimu-G said:
Who will tell them? Their biggest asset was credibility as a news medium. When they started playing cheap politics like anyone in a muguka base they lost it.
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Pretty sure @Field Marshal would agree.
Indeed, they used to be objective. You knew that their news especially was trustworthy and relevant. Even the pundits on their shows and articles in the newspaper was worth it.
Sahii not to lie, RMS seems to have taken their mantle.
 
mzeiya said:
Pretty sure @Field Marshal would agree.
Indeed, they used to be objective. You knew that their news especially was trustworthy and relevant. Even the pundits on their shows and articles in the newspaper was worth it.
Sahii not to lie, RMS seems to have taken their mantle.
Click to expand...
Once a firm starts to operate on a sex for hire policy, allows its agenda to be dictated by the political class and for a media house they start getting their information from FB, Twitter, Bar rumours etc eventually it suffers from the cess pool syndrome....
 
Mwalimu-G said:
Who will tell them? Their biggest asset was credibility as a news medium. When they started playing cheap politics like anyone in a muguka base they lost it.
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If I was doing the PY/CY analytical review I’d have mentioned new forms of media and alternative cheaper advertising as contributors. I guess I’d have failed on that one.
 
Riva said:
If I was doing the PY/CY analytical review I’d have mentioned new forms of media and alternative cheaper advertising as contributors. I guess I’d have failed on that one.
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If you recall when someone dismissed them as being ya kufunga nyama and the larger society seemed to agree, wise men would have introspected and asked themselves why. Instead they commissioned a poll whose results they published saying the media were the most trusted source of news and information...it didn't matter who they were being compared to but one easily remembered the analogy of the tallest dwarf in a class of dwarfs.
 
mzeiya said:
Pretty sure @Field Marshal would agree.
Indeed, they used to be objective. You knew that their news especially was trustworthy and relevant. Even the pundits on their shows and articles in the newspaper was worth it.
Sahii not to lie, RMS seems to have taken their mantle.
Click to expand...
Mwalimu-G said:
Who will tell them? Their biggest asset was credibility as a news medium. When they started playing cheap politics like anyone in a muguka base they lost it.
Click to expand...
I have actually never bought the narrative that they used to report news objectively. Difference is before we had no other source for corroboration, we took what we were fed as the truth. Now with a million and one media channels fact checking is easy
 
Wacheni siasa mingi. Let me give you the hard but controversial thing that is bringing down the Nation. Of course you are free to call me a tribalist.

Two guiding principle first; One, media is a business like any other. Two, in any business, customer is king.

The over-whelming market for media, as with most products, is the wider Mt Kenya region - Nakuru, Nyandarwa, Kiambu, Meru, Nairobi, Machakos, Kajiado, Nyeri, Murang'a, Laikipia, Embu, Kirinyaga and Tharaka-Nithi. Ask EABL or Safaricom.

Around 2006, the Nation board made the mistake of appointing Joseph Odindo to be the Group Managing Editor, GME, of the Nation. It's thinking was simple and time-tested - the group needed to be close to gavament, and it looked like the next president was going to be Raila. Odindo is Babuon's distant cousin, so a Raila presidency needed a Raila man at the top. Gavament is the leading sourse of advertising any way.

Then GME, Wangethi Mwangi, the brother of internal security PS David Mwangi (see the pattern?) was retired to pave way.

In the run-up to the 2007 elections and with Joe as the chief, the Nation went full ODM. Kibaki supporters in the newsroom started getting side-lined. Others were dismissed.. When Raila 'lost' the Nation became a virtual opposition mouthpiece. It started losing its key market - the Mt Kenya region, Kibaki's bedrock.

Between 2008-2013, Odindo continued to pursue the Babuonist editorial policy. Uhuruto alone had over derogatory 150 cartoons drawn by Gado depicting them as ICC prisoners - an international record of sorts. (I once confronted Gado about this on Kenyatta Avenue once). The likes of Kalonzo were drawn as either chameleons or watermelons. The only person who was lionised by the Nation was Babuon.

But Joe went further than that. Incrementally, he removed Mt Kenya reporters, columnists and editors and replaced them with Raila-leaning ones from Western Kenya and Luo Nyanza. The likes of Mbatau wa Ngai, editor, The EastAfrican and Benard Nderitu, editor, Sunday Nation were replaced by Jaindi Kisero (Luo) and ?? Obino (Kisii). Out went Mutahi Ngunyi, for example, and in came rabid Babuonists like Makau Mutua. The only Mt Kenya columnist of note who survived the purge was Gitau Warigi.

Later, when the Board raised the issue of the skewed appointments and kicked out Joe, long after Uhuru had won 2013, the likes of Kagwanja were brought in to try and balance the paper; on Sunday virtually all opinion pieces were from the likes of Atwoli, Otieno-Otieno, Makau Mutua, Opanga, etc.

Mutuma Mathiu, a peacock Meru with an insatiable appetite for young reporters was promoted to Chief but it was too late - damage that had taken over a decade could not be corrected in an year or two without damaging litigation.

The Nation continued with the pro-Babuon, anti-Mt Kenya editorial policy even under Mutuma; it takes a lot to change the direction of a ship, as the recent Suez incident showed.

Today, you can buy a copy of the Nation and the first story by a Gikuyu, Embu, Meru or even Kamba writer/reporter is on page 14. ALL THE OTHER STORIES, FROM PAGE 1 TO 13, will be by writers with names starting with the letters O or A. The lead story will invariably be about Raila.

This is Joe's legacy; destroying the Nation as he had destroyed several other publications before that.

How NMG, with all its experience in navigating the business environment, expected its biggest market to stick with it under these circumstances is beyond me. It's all good to call yourself a national newspaper, but how many copies are bought in Turkana or Lamu? Last year they were forced to cut down 150 jobs. They even asked for Covid support from the same gavament they have been delegitimising.

Media is business, and business is about the customer. If the customer cannot identify with you product you die.

The huge Mt Kenya market has deserted the Nation, as it did the Standard when the later became a Moi mouth-piece.

Sad, but we are now witnessing the death of a brand, courtesy of one Joe Odindo.

(some of the timelines here may be a bit off)
 
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As a consumer, I think the future of media is quality content and having niche stations that are not based on tribes. CBS Reality is for reality TV shows, CNN/BBC/AlJazeera/France24 are for news fulltime, CNBC is strictly business news, Discovery for documentaries, ESPN for sports, Cartoon Network strictly cartoons, etc. You don't find media companies trying to do everything. You will never watch a movie on CNN. The future of the media industry is specialization. Broadcasting the same thing in 20 languages is not specialization.

People think that the internet has disrupted the media business. That is only partially true because it has only disrupted the media companies that have not specialized in anything. Very few youtubers if any have the resources to fund a documentary and compete with Discovery. News stations have to do what Youtubers do not have resources to do.

I would want to know exactly which station to select if I want to watch a specific niche at any time.

Being a news channel at 7PM, a drama channel at 8PM, a cartoon channel at 4PM etc doesn't cut it anymore. I like business news and hate other types of news, but there is no local TV channel that focuses exclusively on business news and finance the way CNBC does abroad. All local TV and radio stations want to do everything and as a result only cover 15 minutes of shallow business news per day and all cover the same news due to that time constraint.

While what @Field Marshal has stated might be true from a market awareness standpoint, I do not think it solely caused the fall of Nation Media Group. I wouldn't be surprised if RMS, Mediamax, etc, were also struggling financially because lack of specialization is an industrywide problem in Kenya.

That's just my opinion as a customer.
 
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Mwalimu-G said:
There's a certain mischief they allowed to creep into their news pages until it became the norm. The indicator was the page two apologies corner became almost a permanent feature. You should know newspapers only apologize in print under duress.
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Mnaona hio mischief ikiingia huku lakini hamuongei, a honest businessman Kama mimi ikisemekana huwa na deal na stolen property sio hio ni makosa Mzee?
 
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