Urban TV has closed its operations after its thirteen-year run, sources at Vision Group, the media conglomerate that ran Urban as its subsidiary, confirmed on Thursday.
The news of Vision Group pulling the plug on Urban TV had earlier been made public by Robin Kisti who has been hosting the evening lifestyle program Short Circuit for the last six months.
“To all my fans that watch me, I just wanted to let you know that you will no longer be seeing me because Urban TV is closing and all of us will no longer be on air. Thank you for the love you showed me, now on to the next one,” Kisti posted Wednesday.
As of Thursday, Urban TV had already pulled its feed on some carriers. On DStv for example, the channel (288) on which Urban TV sat was relaying images by TV West and later Bukedde TV.
Closing the TV which 13 years ago set out to break new ground as a fresh, hip and youth-focused entertainment channel, does not come as a surprise to those who have knowledge of the goings on at Vision Group over the recent past. Sources at the Industrial Area-based media group told PLUGGED the decision to shut down Urban has long been in the pipeline.
This is largely attributed to the persistent failure by the TV to become commercially self-sustaining. For many years, Urban’s revenue has been in a nosedive, a trend that began as far back as 2016 when it first laid off several staff. The business of creating new content had increasingly become a costly venture.
It would soon introduce Celebrity Edition, a news program where celebrities anchored the news on Saturday, in an attempt to introduce new content and win more eyeballs.
Urban TV is only part of a broader challenge that government-owned Vision Group just like many other media organizations in Uganda and world over are facing.
The growing influence that digital media continues to have on content consumers – by providing real-time news updates and a variety of entertaining content – has deprived traditional media organizations of a big chunk of audience traffic. This is coupled with significant drops in advertising revenue due to tough economic circumstances.
Many news media organizations have had to lay off their staff in order to stay afloat.
As last year wound up, Dembe FM, one the oldest Luganda radio stations in the country, announced its closure. The management said it had become necessary to reassess the radio station’s commercial viability.
At the end of 2022, Next Media Services the mother company for NBS Television fired 30 employees in what management described as “digital realignment and restructuring” of the media group.
Next Media said the move was a bid to realign the organization’s digital strategy to the global digital agenda as demanded by the ongoing global technological advancements.
Elsewhere, in the U.S. for example, job cuts at news companies — digital, print, and broadcast outlets — made up more than 60 percent of all layoffs in the media sector in January alone. The number of jobs lost in news companies in the U.S. increased by a staggering 1,660% compared to December 2023.
The BBC in 2022 announced cuts to its World Service output that would result in the loss of over 300 jobs. The British broadcaster blamed years of below-inflation licence fee freezes imposed by the government and the rapidly increasing cost of producing programmes because of the state of the economy.
In its 2022/23 financials, Vision Group’s revenue dropped by 21.3 percent. Advertising revenue dropped 5.4 percent to Ushs 51.2bn, while newspaper circulation sales fell 12.5 percent to Ushs 11.9bn, the fifth consecutive year the income stream has receded.
Don Wanyama, the Vision Group chief executive had earlier pegged the poor performance to persistent effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, disruptions in the supply chain (due to the war in Ukraine), the rise in prices of most of the printing inputs due to global inflation and reduced spending by government which is Vision Group’s biggest advertiser.
Vision Group’s revenues are dominated by print which accounts for almost half, followed by broadcasting (radio and television) outlets, commercial printing and others.
In the year 2022/23, the Group’s operating expenses rose 14 percent due to increases in distribution costs, administrative expenses and allowances for expected credit losses.
There has been simmering grumbling at Vision Group by staff who have gone several months without pay. The competitiveness in the media sector and the general unfavorable conditions in the private sector has left many of these employees with no choice but to endure.
Urban TV’s ratings peaked in the year after its launch aided by a youthful and enthusiastic team (creative directors and presenters) that were hellbent on delivering something new to a market that was saturated with a tired format of programming.
Some of the on-screen names that led this new wave included Danze Mosha, Gaetano Kagwa, King Shovon, Mary Luswata, Daniel Mumbere and Mister Deejay. The list also had Samson Kasumba, Denzel, Malaika Nyanzi, Ronald Kato, Brian Keyla McKenzie, Razia Athman and Humphrey Wampula among others.
A staffer at Vision Group told PLUGGED; “Urban TV does not make business sense, and this has been the case for a while. Salary arrears for most of the staff have since shot through the roof. The Group can no longer afford to maintain Urban any longer.”
Another source at the multimedia company revealed that Bukedde TV 2 as well as other regional stations with exception of TV West will also be closed. Adding that X FM could be the next on the chopping block.
“Closing Urban was long over due. It was Kabushenga (former Group chief exec) that has always been the station’s lifeline each time the Board attempted to close it. That’s like 4 years,” a staffer who preferred anonymity said.
Kabushenga’s argument, the source said, was that Vision Group could not afford to lose its grip on the young audience. It is on the same basis that Kabushenga had launched Urban – to appeal to a demographic that had been sidelined.
“Of course in the latter years of his tenure, this seized to hold any substance because when Bush Baby left, the station became something unrecognizable. Bush Baby held the key to Urban’s original identity together with guys like Josh ‘The Fixer’ Mwesigwa,” said the source.
There have been popular sentiments that in the subsequent years, under the management of Miles Rwamiti, the TV station became ‘another Bukedde TV’ only with more appealing graphics.
Until today, Vision Group ran two newspapers New Vision and Bukedde, six TV stations Urban TV, Bukedde TV 1, Bukedde TV 2, TV East, Wan Luo TV and TV West, and six Radio stations Bukedde FM, X FM, Radio West, Rupiny, Etop and Arua One.
