The Standard Media Group has announced a temporary downtime affecting its TV and radio stations, which has resulted in the disruption of services.
The media house, in a brief statement on Friday morning, disclosed that most of its radio and TV platforms were temporarily off air due to a technical hitch.
However, the Standard announced that some of its TV and radio services, including KTN, Radio Maisha, Spice FM, and Berur FM, were still on air.
Following the incident, the media outlet noted that efforts were underway to rectify the outage, adding that engineers were already on the site working to address the matter.
"Standard Group radio and TV platforms temporarily off air due to a technical hitch; KTN, Radio Maisha, Spice FM, and Berur FM available online as engineers work to restore services," the Standard Media Group stated.
Nonetheless, the Standard media did not detail the main cause of the outage despite several viewers reportedly seeking to know why the stations were unavailable.
The latest development comes amid significant struggles by the media house, spanning from financial constraints that allegedly resulted in unpaid salaries and threats of licence revocation by the Communication Authority of Kenya (CA).
In April this year, CA threatened to revoke Standard Media's broadcasting licence, citing non-payment of more than Ksh43 million in fees and other levies.
The letter, signed by CA Director General David Mugonyi, and directed to the media house, the Authority directed Standard Media to pay the pending fees or face licence revocation.
However, the media outlet led by its Chief Executive Editor, Chacha Mwita, accused the government of allegedly attempting to use the debt issue to intimidate the media house.
"The strangest thing about this case is that the government owes us over Ksh1.2 billion, and what the CA is asking from us is Ksh48 million, a figure we refute because we have significantly brought it down," Mwita stated.
The media house has also been on the receiving end of government senior officials over its 'bold' newspaper headlines, which mostly criticise President William Ruto's administration, a factor which prompted the withdrawal of advertising contracts.
