TV PROGRAMMING

The trouble with Kenya is her TV; at best boring and alien. Whatever local we have is poor and now a copy cat. There was a time we did not care how many locals we had showing, we just cared who had the best shows. It was the funniest comedies that won, the most gripping dramas that held viewers and we had no soaps to bore us and misinform and misguide the young girls that there was a perfect world made so by something called love. In those great and glorious days, we had no soaps that transformed grown women into a pulp of confusion. I miss the days when locals were as original as the 1995 Mama Kayai and Ojwang and drama was Seventh Heaven and adverts were as entertaining as the Vicks Kingo one.
Now everything has changed – for the worse. We have locals that look like like a test tube baby gone awry, and if you dropped into a Kenyan sitting room any late morning and afternnon, you might mistake this for Nigeria. But thank God for KTN, they are always so independent, they would never become a Naija station. They go one better and buy all the crap South Africa has in the garbage. From comedies with no smiles to dramas and action that only belong in South Africa. That is when you have to turn to NTV. At least they are focusing on the urban youth. It must be entertaining. But I came to realise that NTV has 10 minutes of entertainment every week; 5 minutes on Friday during Bull’s Eye and another 5 on Saturday when it is repeated. Now, now, wat remains of entertainment at KTN? Ah! I remember! We have to wait for Lilian Muli to engage her Kamba accent. My mum won’t find it funny when she says KT ‘hen’ for KTN, so what must she turn to? There is a variety of stations, but if what you want is entertainment, get yourself some pirated movie.
What is it that the variety has brought? There is KTN first. They pioneer everything, but they can’t run fast enough. They will have a great show, a world classic, but they will be showing the second episode at a time when I am watching the third season. They used to have great movies, now the guy they have given the task of deciding what we watch simply goes to the studio and presses REPLAY. I think they last bought a movie in 2004, and it was old then. And on whose life are their locals based on, I have not seen a Manhattan suburb in Nairobi. But with the locals they are not alone, there has been an outbreak of some sort of acting malaise in the local industry. A vast majority of locals are poorly done copy cats of a foreign thing. We must appraise Makutano Junction and Papa Shirandula for some form of independence. Makutano is especially original and with a good picture quality. Shirandula has the watchman concept that every body is now copying. I am particularly itched by Nairobi Law. They have a poor picture quality, the same malnourished and underage judge who can’t afford a good tie, the same prosecutor who has watched too much TV legal drama, Kimani who has shamefully tried to enact Boston Legal. The choice of characters was totally wrong, going by the fact that they sought as many renowned artists as they could find. Then they got themselves a room that looks like the store next to the stairs in a Kayole building. Not satisfied with all that mess, they told us that these dramas were based on true cases that appeared in the Kenyan courts, only for me to watch and find little of the acting being done in a court. When they did decide to get to a court, their cases were heard on one day and the judgement on the next! Not even our president would have it that fast in Kenya. Never mind that on the second day most of the people in the court will still be wearing what they wore yesterday. I hate this thing!
Now, Citizen is not the only annoying station. The one I have to delete from my TV is K24. Was the K meant to stand for Koinange? Because it certainly is Koinange 24. I heard it was supposed to be a news channel 24/7. Well they have 3 minutes news about things that are not really news like an African proverb and music programmes. When they want news they have to ask another station to chip in. Poor quality sound and picture, a background that was undoubtedly made by a road side artist and anchors who have not been introduced to make up. It is one station that deleted its mission and vision statement as soon as they had been read, so now they will go wherever they can go; where tomorrow takes them. For a news channel they have done the wackiest job I have ever seen or heard of. I would rather watch Unjiru Tv.
And now we must ban all these Mexican soaps. They are contaminating our women and girls with immorality and cutting their IQs by three quarters. You have to group these soaps with the awkwardly un-African condom adverts. While we are on the adverts; why does the Harpic advert only appear while am eating my supper? I hate this one product, not only for spoiling my meals; they have also wasted one of the greatest talents in comedy. They made Nyambane change careers from comedy to washing toilets!
If TV is meant to be entertainment, why do they allow boring and annoying adverts too? The short term goals of profitability have overtaken the purpose of TV, for how long it will continue I cannot say. Let somebody start thinking in these studios. We are bored with TV!