The Communications Authority (CA) has announced the revocation of licenses held by 56 Kenyan TV stations.
As captured in the gazette notice published on April 12, Communications Authority Director General David Mugonyi stated that the revocation would take effect seven days after the date of publication which is April 19, 2024.
“Notice is given pursuant to the provisions of the Kenya Information and Communications Act, 1998, that the Communications Authority of Kenya shall revoke the licences of the following service providers/operators within seven (7) days”, read the notice in part.
The notice outlined that as soon as the process is completed, resources under the revoked license names will be reverted to the Authority.
“Upon revocation of the licences listed hereabove, the service providers/operators shall not be authorized to operate and provide the services as indicated in the respective tables above.
However, the notice did not provide the reasons behind the revocation of the licenses.
Some notable stations whose licenses have been revoked include; Daystar Television owned by the Community Life Uplift Organisation. Others include; Jubilee TV and Pwani TV.
Notably, all the revoked licenses belong to stations listed under the commercial free to air category.
Similarly, all the TV stations which have had their licenses revoked belong to various organisations including; educational, religious and business institutions.
Besides issuing the notice to revoke the quoted licenses, CA also announced that it is currently considering granting licenses to 9 TV stations.
The directive to revoke the stations' licenses comes after the Authority issued new guidelines for TV and radio stations on March 9.
In the new guidelines, advertisements with the tag news flash, and breaking news were banned. Animations depicting violence were also banned in a policy move aimed at protecting children.
