CHEAP TALK, TV TALK SHOWS AND DECREE FOR NEWS PRESENTERS

Talk is cheap. And Kenyan TV talk shows are close to cheapening engagement with target and non-intended audiences. Formats are getting increasingly unimaginative and too draining to sustain the already straining viewer attention. When was a decree issued for news presenters to have their own shows?

It's all good to be versatile and capable of discharging multiple roles in a broadcast station. It does make you look useful to the Human Resources honchos, and could expand your legions of 'adoring' fans.

And hopefully, interviewing skills can get some much needed polishing.

But a TV talk show will need much more than your presence or your name dominating its title, for it to resonate with the viewers and remain relevant past the first season.

- A solid creative team with liquid ideas is very necessary. Topics might be finite but not delivery styles.

- It won't hurt to have the backing of an experienced production crew.

- It will stink to lift programme formats from both local and international channels, with cosmetic customisation.

- A programme will sink if nobody thinks about product differentiation, in this era of market segmentation and audience fragmentation.

Copy that news presenters cum talk show hosts.

VISUAL TORTURE, SASHAYING CENTRE PIECES AND TV NEWS PRESENTATION

Two eyes one brain. That's all viewers of broadcast news have, to appreciate the visual elements. The field of view is 180 degrees. But it places an awful lot of strain on the eyes, if a TV news screen has many areas of focus. There could be added value from the presentation style, but at times, this is reduced to visual torture, delivered in multi-screens.

Already, Kenyan TV station managers have conspired to divert attention from the news content to the deliverer of the news.

So there is always a walking, talking, smiling and sashaying centre piece, oozing raw sex appeal, often disguised as sophisticated news presenters (seldom anchors).

Then you throw in screens behind to further add to the futile competition for attention with the centre piece, possibly laden with supposed relevant pictures or computer graphics.

But it's simply mind-boggling trying to understand the complex reasoning that necessitated having the exact same elements repeated in two windows/screens.

It could also be a novel way of trying to expand the coverage of an issue, by having multiple angles, as highlighted by a battalion of news presenters and TV reporters, all squeezed into the safe areas of a TV monitor.

Some find this engaging. But I see it as too much work for my slow brain, tasked with picking up all these visuals, and trying so hard to have an enriched sense of the day's main news.

Insisting on delivering the news via a 'mass choir' of presenters, equally delivers the same killer punch to my 'besieged' eye-brain co-ordination inadequacies.

This also poses auditory discomforts, when the sopranos and bass 'representers'...voila...go into interlocution mode at the same time, al a off key!

La la...la la la... la la...lalalalala.

IMPERSONATOR IN STUDIO: MEDIA NEEDS A DOSE OF ITS OWN DUE DILIGENCE GOSPEL

The Kenyan media never seem to tire, in advising members of their audience to carry out due diligence, before parting with money or committing to something. But do the media houses partake of their own wise counsel? So, one moment you are all excited about hosting someone in your studios, then days later, it turns out the same person is a suspected criminal.

Should those charged with sourcing guests for TV programmes, e.g., be required to do a thorough background check, before clearing potential guests?

It certainly looks bad for a TV channel to host somebody in their studio, only for it to later emerge that the same person could be behind a heinous impersonation scheme, which also targets staff members of the same station.

So, before a host got all mesmerised (on behalf of the audience), marvelling at the 'magical' cards skills of the studio guest, it perhaps would have been useful to ensure there is nothing sinister up the sleeves of the 'trickster', beyond the visual deception or sleight of hand.

Again, if the 'hacker was hacked' to possibly reveal the person behind the elaborate yet devilish prank, does it imply the same news channel condemns and condones hacking in the same breath?

As somebody has pointed it out already, the local media does seem to be abdicating its moral compass responsibilities, going by how a person, who recently failed to pay a private debt, ended up being given so much public prominence.

Next time, don't act so surprised, if you see the same ills that the local media highlights, flourishing in the very same media houses!

ONE DRESS, THREE NEWS PRESENTERS, THREE TV STATIONS

It might be a case of unnecessarily splitting hairs. But the homogeneity in sourcing, packaging and delivery of news in Kenyan TV stations has entered a new phase. News presenters across various channels are now either sharing the same clothes, or are using the same stylist or stockist.

The same way the copy-cat syndrome is rampant, especially in the electronic media terrain, where one idea is quickly 'duplicated' across news stations, is perhaps what is happening to this particular outfit.

Indeed it is not unheard of, for a particular news story aired by one channel, to somehow be 'reincarnated' in another, (without even crediting the original source of the idea).

But in this case, the question of which news presenter was the first to don the outfit, and who then pinched the 'fashion statement' is unclear.

Incredibly, the 'popular' apparel design appeared on screen simultaneously in two channels, because two news presenters had it on the same day and time!

And so, it not improbable for two media outlets to at times be working on the same idea and labelling it as 'exclusive. A bemused audience will be forgiven for wondering whether the real meaning of 'exclusivity' is being appreciated and applied by the competing stations.

Back to the dressing style though, it later on re-emerged in yet another TV station. This, an indicator perhaps, of one, how the culture of recycling has taken root in the Kenyan media space, and two, how nobody at times seems to be monitoring what the competitor has already put out.

And that's how one similar dress can end up with three news presenters in three different TV stations!