A rising tide favors innovative ship builders. Let's talk digital migration.

“After much deliberation, the good Lord decreed that change must not be patented”

I am wary of all things popular having learned that agendas are often packaged as popular notions. However modern society has in a way liberated itself in growing into popularity topics of their liking - everything from a YouTube video of a dog reacting to a clown horn to commenting on Kenya’s digital migration. 

Alas the great digital migration. I guess I should contribute to the conversation and offer my humble opinion. Perhaps as an aspiring blogger I too must teach myself to contribute when seated around the great digital fireplace that is the internet and especially social media.

What is digital TV? This perhaps should be our starting point because to solve a problem one must search for its root cause. Secondly we must seek to unearth the motivation behind a worldwide shift from analog to digital television. Digital TV (DTV) is simply better television – it is better looking, better sounding and is capable of broadcasting multiple channels with more programming. In a nut shell DTV enables content providers and creators to distribute their content in a plethora of creative, interactive and varying formats. It also allows the said parties to prepare content which the viewer can choose and interact with. Digital TV is an exciting evolution and more than just a set top box.

Now from my vantage point analog TV did in many ways try to keep up with the ever changing information gathering and content distribution formats brought about by the internet. We witnessed a shift from filling the TV screen real estate with video content, to the embedding of lower third tickers, new ways of advertising and the inclusion of information like live soccer scores to complement the video content. 

The moment we began to consume multimedia content on the internet, forward thinking television executives around the world donned their collective thinking hat and took up arms in a bid to remain relevant. The internet capitalized on our ability to appreciate more than one content distribution avenue - meaning we could do more than just sit still and listen to radio or watch TV. Secondly the internet began to merge multiple content distribution technologies which would otherwise have resided on different dedicated platforms like a radio, a television screen and a music player. Websites were popping up boosting audio streams and on demand videos coupled with graphical, textual and interactive content. 

Enter a generation with totally new multimedia consumption habits and a slew of complementary technologies adherent to the upheaval of multimedia distribution stratagem. Talk about fanning the flames of change which no doubt already had TV and radio executives panicked … well at least those who deem the deliberate stifling of technology a wise business strategy. Smart phones became the third screen after television and computer monitors, smart TVs empowered gleeful audiences with on demand video as opposed to suffering themselves to programming chosen by a small group of people in bed with a small group of ‘agencies’. Suddenly the tongue in cheek and often ignorant sentiments on millions of people like ‘Kenyans are peculiar’ (a totally racist sentiment which by some miracle is still echoed by some of our brethren), or ‘Kenyans are not ready for high definition content’, were run out of town by a youthful, educated and well informed army of pitchfork and torches welding Kenyans weary of repetitive mediocre content.   

I am of the opinion that digital TV is a reaction to the shortcomings of analog TV being exploited by digital platforms like mobile applications and websites dedicated to the distribution of multimedia content. Should an entire generation regard the television screen as outdated technology and that which a previous generation used to consume multimedia content, then a huge industry crucial to society will surely be lost. It makes sense to keep the traditional television screen relevant as it serves multiple purposes including empowering the media, informing and educating the masses, providing entertaining content and doing all these at a price point attainable by most Kenyans. Enter the million dollar question, why are some lauding digital TV as the best thing since sliced bread, well at least in Kenya, while others are decrying the development as dictatorial tendencies by the government of the day and a return to the dark days? 

Firstly ‘Team Dark Days’ are right. These are dark days for them and they are indeed in the dark for change has stolen the light of opportunity they coveted from Kenyans. The said parties’ strike me as being of the opinion that profits come before ethics, that regurgitation trounces originality, that innovation is an upfront to the status quo and that the stifling of technology as opposed to evolving one’s business according to the changing tide, is a strategy sufficient to maintain relevance in this day and age. It makes absolutely no sense for three media giants to demand that the government of the day stifle technology and snub a worldwide trend so that over forty million souls may continue consuming content sanctioned by them and only them. 

Secondly competition is healthy. There is a reason why this assertion has prevailed over hundreds of years. Monopolies create comfort zones, lock out otherwise innovative and inventive thinkers all the while creating a cartel of fat cats who only grow lazier and of course fatter, gifting them the power to maintain an uneven playing field and a rigged system which favors them. Take a walk around Nairobi and behold the stark lack of creativity on the huge advertising billboards for example. The government of the day was shall we say forced to force the hand of media houses and content distributors not because the world has shifted to digital TV, mind you North Korea has pretty much promised to remain analog but that’s a strange land governed by strange people, rather because once you allow a few monopolistic sociopaths to carry the day, a domino effect will follow. Kenya will become the grave yard of brilliant ideas and their sad, overlooked, frustrated progenitors; a land where creativity, invention and innovation will be swiftly punished and strangled. Soon all manner of original and critical thought will be attacked as more and more dumbed down nonsense is shoved down our throats. 

In closing I must say I marvel at the ignorance and laziness displayed by some of the media houses. I am also angry at these fat cats for they have clearly demonstrated not only their lack of ambition to inspire Kenyans and aspire to become world class outfits, but their closet psychotic mindset of actually polluting Kenyan minds with sensationalized news, fear mongering, divisive politics and worse attacking the young minds of our children with outright dumbed down, unethical nonsense veiled in the cloak of entertainment. We are not returning to the dark days dear dinosaurs we are departing from them.    

PragmaTech is written by Seth Muriithi for Alcove Media Ltd. A software and creative multimedia company based in Nairobi, Kenya.