Commercialized Media Environment and Sustainability of Community Radio: Case Study of Mang’elete 89.1FM

Abstract

The liberalization of broadcasting airwaves in Kenya in 1990s saw proliferation of the private FM radio stations. These radio stations have commercialized the media environment with throat-cut competition, where even the programming must have commercial value, to attract the right audience in order to attract advertisers. The public, private and community radio stations are competing for the same or similar audience. As a result, this has created a challenge on the sustainability of the community radio projects in Kenya, which usually depend on donors to fund their operations. This study was therefore aimed at exploring how sustainable is the community radio in such competitively commercialized media setting. The study also sought identify challenges and opportunities for the same in order to remain sustainable and viable, without losing focus of its development agenda to empower local community by remaining a participatory media tool for the community, by the community. The research drew lessons around sustainability of community radio by focusing on a case study on one of Community radios in Kenya, Mang‘elete FM, in Nthongoni, Kibwezi, Makueni County. It adopted a mixed qualitative and quantitative research methods to collect information through questionnaires, Focus Group Discussion, one-on-one interviews and Document reviews, which were analyzed and presented as narrative, frequency distribution tables, graphs and charts from which inferences and conclusions were drawn, and research report compiled for presentation. The study found that the sustainability of community radio is highly challenged by growing commercially oriented radio stations. Faced by poor leadership and management as well as low community participation, the community radio projects have been unable to withstand shocks of donor exit. Nevertheless, this study found that community radio stations such as Mang‘elete Radio still enjoy consider considerable goodwill from local communities who identify with stations due to their proximity which brings about sense of local ownership. The study recommends that, together with these opportunities, the community radio stations can improve their chances of sustainability by using volunteer programmes involving the local community.