Wednesday 24 February 2010

Football Broadcasts - Another Radio Station joins the Circus

Those of you who make time with your favourite radio presenters and stations will notice that there has been an increased occurrence of stations broadcasting live football games.
Commendable it would be BUT I can't emphasise the fact that most of these focus mostly on the English Premier League and Champions League on weekdays. A great departure was the Africa Cup of Nations and of course we have the World Cup coming up in June which the national broadcaster and Radio Africa Group are hoping to reap handsomely.
On Saturday, yet another local radio station , Milele FM (specialising in playing rhumba music) broadcast the English Premiership games in partnership with BBC ( Idhaa ya Kiswahili) - great for your average football fan but disastrously to the growth of local game.
With the interest in the local game rising, we are bound to have fans starting to tune into the stations to find their favourite presenters as they make-believe and blow themselves hoarse as they bring the games.
Though it seems like a conspiracy by the media companies especially TV,I think they can serve our state of the game better by reducing these channels. For their business model it will work in the short term but for the local and continental game, no way.
While we all remember during the Africa Cup of Nations especially the final games, we know how Egypt v/s Ghana's game was beamed albeit to a reduced audience across it as most people preferred watching the EPL's Arsenal v/s Man U !!!
The dilemma first for the Kenyan football authorities is to sort out the first few problems of an unattractive game which needs to be worked on to impress upon fans to make their way into the stadiums. This will in turn become an attraction for the fans to come watch these fixtures. The incentives are coming through with sponsorship packages as corporate companies make their way into the game, KDN, Sofapaka and others thank you !
Ultimately, the local radio stations will have no option to give the local game preference over the other leagues. No illusions about this, we need to build our OWN!

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