By Lauren Mwanga
Before Television or radio, cinemas were the available methods for people to catch up with news worldwide. British Pathé, since 1896 was at the forefront of cinematic journalism worldwide but for British news information and entertainment. Pathé is a world treasured newsreel archive and the team recorded more than 85,000 films which are very important to the history of many countries.
In Kenya, Pathé was around since the 1940 s capturing different historical events from the Mau Mau insurgency, to Kenya’s elections, independence, and the declaration of the country as a republic. Many of the recorded reels from Pathé are now extensively used by schools, companies, different productions, and also stored in our museum. The role of these early entities was to start of broadcasting in many Worldwide and African countries such as Kenya.
Sourced from the British Pathe videos since 1940.https://www.britishpathe.com/workspaces/f89bda26efca1a5fa1b82009f9ab7f43/Kenya
Broadcasting in Kenya started as Radio in 1928 that was aimed at the European settlers, even as local nationalist press rose to oppose colonial policies such as racial segregation. Radio transmission started in Kenya in 1927 with the advent of the East African Broadcasting Corporation (EABC), which relayed BBC news to the colonies. The first English Radio Broadcasting went on air in 1928 and served only whites and Asians. The first radio broadcasts for Africans went on air during the Second World War.
In 1953 Africa Broadcasting Services, the first African Radio was established with programmes in Swahili, Luo, Kikuyu, Nandi, Luhya, Kipsigis, Kamba and Arabic. In 1959, local Kenya Broadcasting Corporation was established with both radio and television access by the British. Television access was launched in 1962. When Kenya attained independence, the government was worried about the threat to national sovereignty posed by the foreign ownership of the channel and decided to nationalize the corporation in June 1964. It was also renamed to Voice Of Kenya (VOK) in 1989 and now had a new role to serve as the government mouthpiece. Information released to the public was heavily censored and this compromised the integrity of the journalist and their work.
The economic liberalization of the East African economies in the early 1990 s led to opening of the broadcasting sector and more space was created for the licensing of private television and radio entities such as Kenya Television Network (KTN) in late 1989 and Capital FM which was the first privately owned radio in 1995 which came with a different approach rather than being a propaganda mouthpiece for the government. These stations featured both local news and productions. Nation Media Group and Royal Media Services which were also licensed and quickly rose as independent stations and free from government control. The stations featured and continue to show both foreign and local material. Royal Media Services which runs a collection of 2 TV and 14 radio stations scattered across Kenya has positioned itself as the go to media house for local production of films and television projects which serves as an incubator for many creatives to showcase their work and access a large and diverse local audience.
Film-making, which thrives in the shadow of the mainstream broadcast media entities will be the subject of another article. The state of filming got to rise with the changes in the broadcasting sector in the country as many films were shown to the locals and the different stations wanted more views and traffic to their channels.