Royal Media Services (RMS) houses some of the leading vernacular radio stations in the country as it takes the lion's share of the audience.
The media house shook up Kenya's radio industry in the 2000s when it targetted various communities with vernacular stations.
In the team, was Julian Macharia who is a media professional with over 20 years of experience in communications.
In an interview on the YouTube channel CTA, Macharia disclosed how he came to work for RMS before it became the power media house it is today.
"When I joined Royal Media, we were 20 employees and with the liberalization of media during President Kibaki's era, the owner S.K Macharia has seen the vision to expand," he explained.
Julian recalled that Macharia directed them to focus on the rural audiences when creating the stations for different regions as they sought to move away from the Nairobi audience.
He added that SK Macharia was very particular in separating content for the vernacular stations so as not to mix with English content.
"We would set up three stations a year for Royal Media and we ended up with 15 stations in total," he disclosed.
He led the team in coming up with the idea and name of the station, set up the infrastructure for broadcasting as a well as recruiting talent/ presenters for the stations.
Julian also delved into selling concepts to advertisers and making radio ads for the different stations.
"At first it was not easy to sell a concept to a corporate in a station that is broadcasting entirely in one language, but soon they warmed to the idea and began advertising with us," he explained.
The team would produce ten radio advertisements a day for the radio stations.
The stations made RMS the media house with the biggest reach in the country which the media company has maintained to date.
Currently, Royal Media Services owns 13 radio stations namely, Radio Citizen, Ramogi FM, Inooro FM, Hot 96, Musyi FM, Chamgei FM, Muuga FM, Egesa FM, Bahari FM, Mulembe FM, Wimwaro FM, Sulwe FM, and Vuuka FM.
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