As news about the closure of Urban TV continues to permeate, there are those who will see it as good riddance.
Those who argue the Vision Group-owned asset is a shadow of its former self. And they wouldn’t be wrong. Before Urban TV lost its urbanness and morphed into ‘another Bukedde TV’ as many have described it, it was a revved concept that trailblazed Uganda’s TV programming in several aspects.
And the idea began in 2010 with a conscious decision by Vision Group (VG) to create a dedicated TV platform that would cater for a particular demographic – the youth. This was under the steadfast leadership of Robert Kabushenga who left the news and printing giant three years ago.
RELATED: Urban TV shuts down after 13 years as traditional media contends with new pressures
Uganda’s biggest multimedia group was looking to appeal to the English-speaking market, having successfully catered for the vernacular segment with the launch of Bukedde TV a year prior.
Urban’s target audience would be Kampalans who spoke English and fell in the 18 to 35 age bracket. ‘A station for tomorrow’ is what it was supposed to be.
Thirteen years later, today, the writing is on the wall. That Vision Group lost its vision and failed to evolve with the needs of today – what was 2010’s ‘tomorrow’.
“I remember I told Robert Kabushenga, ‘At some point, you might have to shut down this channel because where the industry is headed, there’s something called the second screen and a time will come when audiences are going to migrate and go towards that angle’. Back then, it was the second screen but today it’s the first screen. I’m talking about smartphones, tablets, the PC and all that,” veteran deejay and TV producer, DJ Bush Baby exclusively told PLUGGED in a recent interview, looking back at sentiments he held over a decade ago regarding the broadcasting landscape.
“He (Kabushenga) didn’t really buy into it back then or perhaps it was not necessary at that time,” he adds.
What Bush Baby was flagging to then VG chief exec was the dilemma that broadcasters and print media globally find themselves in today. Which is the growing influence that digital media continues to have on content consumers – by providing real-time news updates and a variety of entertaining content. This has deprived traditional media of a big chunk of audience traffic resulting in many of them cutting their employees significantly while others have had to shut down.
Bush Baby who is praised for presiding over a period when Urban TV made its biggest impression on the market, had just returned to Uganda after working in Tanzania and Kenya. In Tanzania, he plyed his trade at IPP Media Limited, one of East Africa’s leading media conglomerates that owned East Africa Radio and East Africa TV (EATV). He was Head of Radio and Head of Programming at East Africa Radio, and at the same time, a presenter on EATV (Channel 5).
On return to Uganda, he had opened House of Talent, a production house which produced XXL, a lifestyle magazine for NTV Uganda.
On a random meeting with Bill Tibingana, longtime Head of Broadcast and Strategy at Vision Group, Bill had interested Bush in joining VG. Bill had also let him in on the soon-to-be-launched assets which targeted a demographic that Bush understood quite well. One of the assets was Xfm, a rebrand of Vision Voice (radio) while the other was a new TV channel.
Bush was sold. Starting out as a co-host on Xfm’s morning show (X-AM) with Siima and Rudende. Two years later, Urban TV would finally go on air.
VG had acquired little-known Sports TV then owned by Nanda Andersen (ex-Head of TV at UBC and Director, Star Leo Advertising) and rebranded it to Urban TV.
In 2012, Bush was officially on-boarded as the Creative Director for Urban, but not without some hoops to jump. The sad reality of intrigue, drama, politics and sabotage that characterize many government institutions and the corporate world would quickly dawn on him. There were some people that felt his rise was quick.
“This is not good for creatives like me who operate on blind passion and just want to see things happen. But I had to find a way to not naively get trapped into the politics of the day.”
Management had on its part been contending with not-so-rosy feedback from the market research including potential clients and viewers. The sentiment was that Urban TV was a duplication of Bukedde TV, only with better aesthetics. Kabushenga and team needed to quickly turn things around. In the boardroom conversations, Bush Baby’s name kept popping up as a capable candidate given his experience with EATV and East African Radio.
Susan ‘Sue’ Nsibirwa (now managing director at Nation Media Group-Uganda) who was then marketing and communications head at VG along with Mark Walungama (then Head of TV) and Bill Tibingana were among some of the people on the VG exco that bet on Bush.
“That’s 2012. I’m given full autonomy of the platform. I became the brand custodian, brand manager, station manager and everything. That time, Mr. Kabushenga’s leadership had an open door policy. You would see him at anytime and sell him an idea.”
“I also joined the Group when it was flourishing financially, innovations were in top gear. They had ventured into tabloid offerings like The Kampala Sun. They were going heavy on digital. I was really given a soft landing in terms of facilitation and support, because they really needed this thing to work. The Board wanted answers, the shareholders wanted answers and advertisers wanted results,” Bush Baby recalls.
It was time to roll his sleeves and deliver the results.
Now, he needed the talent to bring this dream to reality. The Group launched a talent search (Rated Next, the presenters’ edition) which discovered fresh faces that were raw, hungry, young, and ready to make an impression. It’s this search that birthed the likes of Denzel Mwiyeretsi who in 2013 represented Uganda in Season 8 of Big Brother Africa.
“It meant that their (talent) brains were virgin. You could plant any idea in them and they would execute it to your satisfaction. You can correct me if I’m wrong, but Urban TV was the first channel to start off with fresh faces. Nobody was poached from existing TV stations.”
Some of the names that graced the screen included Danze Mosha, Gaetano Kaggwa, Sophie Tatu, King Shovon, Mary Luswata, Daniel Mumbere and Mister Deejay. The list also had Samson Kasumba, Malaika Nyanzi, Ronald Kato, Brian Keyla McKenzie, Brenda Kembabazi, Razia Athman and Humphrey Wampula among others.
Many of these names have come to be forces to reckon with when it comes to broadcast.
Among the content that aired during Urban TV’s heyday was shows like The Jump Off, a fresh TV concept created and produced by Raising The Bar, an external production house that DJ Bush Baby co-ran with Josh ‘The Fixer’ Mwesigwa.
The Jump Off was a 30-minute serving of trending lifestyle hosted by the apt and grounded ‘Mister Deejay’. One of its segment dubbed Plan B gave viewers a peak into the alternative lives that celebrities would lead if they ever lost the fame. Away from the segments, it was the graphics and editing that gave the show captivating effect.
Urban also pioneered what has now become a common primetime format for TV – gossip shows on celebrities – with Sqoop on Sqoop which was hosted by the controversial Mary Luswata.
You have to recall the TV channel peaked in the same period that Uganda’s entertainment scene was at its most vibrant ever. Goodlyfe was churning out endless hits, Swangz Avenue had creatively broken new ground, artistes like Keko were pioneering new sounds and winning continental appeal, and a never-seen spirit of collaboration had birthed anthems like Mr. DJ and Locomotive.
Mun G, A Pass, Rabadaba and GNL Zamba had popped up from nowhere and defied the norms of Ugandan music yet won audiences over. Such a period was a TV-content goldmine.
It was the heights of perfection that Bush and Mwesigwa had aimed for with The Jump Off that swayed Kabushenga and his Management to their side. So much so that the Marketing team asked them to replicate the creative direction they had taken with the show across the entire programming of Urban.
Synovate, the market research firm, had conducted an audience tracking survey and the findings had indicated that The Jump Off had the highest rankings on Urban TV.
Beyond the on-air talent and the content substance, it was the edgy graphics and outstanding editing that set Urban TV apart from the park. Much of that credit goes to Josh ‘The Fixer’ Mwesigwa, one of Uganda’s gems when it comes to video content production.
— Josh Mwesigwa. (@JoshTheFixer) March 31, 2024
Mwesigwa joined Urban TV in July of 2013 as a brand designer. He was in charge of the look and feel of the new channel.
Knowing the demographic (18-35) they were targeting, he had to understand what got the young viewer and what they wanted to watch.
“If it is sports, sports has to be fast, it has to be quick, it has to have high energy music. The intros, outros and transitions have to match what the target audience wants. You do that from the look and feel of the channel to the different shows – news and entertainment,” Mwesigwa told PLUGGED.
Prior to Urban, Josh had worked at Lowe Scanad – Uganda (the marketing agency) as a graphics designer and later at Fenon as a video director. He had tried and tested his creative knack at some of the leading brands in Uganda’s creative ecosystem.
Asked whether it was easy to achieve what an out-of-the-box product like Urban needed in order to win eyeballs, he said; “We had a strategy. Our strategy was to onboard young viewers, and at least on the creative side, it was easy.”
In a bid to achieve this, it meant he had to introduce shorter TV intros because young people have a short attention span.
“You want a bumper to be 3 seconds and it’s off. Today we see content on TikTok that has no intro, and it’s energetic. The moment you are talking to young people as a TV, you have to read them and understand them.”
— Josh Mwesigwa. (@JoshTheFixer) March 31, 2024
However, four years after its inception, the channel began to lose its salt. And among the reasons for this was the competing interests. For example, the Board which was more concerned with the bottom line exerted immense pressure on the programming team to deliver commercial results.
“The Board became impatient and put top Management under pressure to justify Urban TV’s business existence in the market. Of course for them they are not technical people. They know ‘We have signed off X amount of money for the financial year and we expect X amount in terms of projections’. They were not seeing the money coming back and they became jittery,” says Bush.
It was these competing interests – protecting the sanctity of the product Vs. revenue – that led Management to pivot from their initial target audience pushing it above age 40.
“They told us to do 40+. Forty plus means you are going to go heavy into current affairs which is the most expensive television format. It meant you had to break the bank as VG to tussle with NTV Akawungezi, NTV Tonight, Amasengejje or NBS Live At 9. With the resources we had, it would require magic to pull that off.”
Uganda’s broadcast media, including the government-backed national broadcaster, still lacks the financial muscle required to effectively cover current affairs, some analysts have argued.
Last year, Next Media Services began the process of segmenting its subsidiaries – NBS TV and Sanyuka TV – in a quest to niche their programming. NBS primarily focusing on current affairs while Sanyuka caters for those seeking entertainment. The thinking at the Naguru-based company was that this direction would position NBS TV as the channel that a CNN consumer can watch, for round-the-clock coverage of news and current affairs.
But Bart Kakooza, a media consultant who has 20 years experience of TV production (having worked with CNN, BBC, CNN, Aljazeera, ITV and UTV) viewed NBS TV’s strategy with skepticism. He describes 24/7 current affairs broadcasting as “a nail-biting affair” that requires at least Shs 15m every day.
The market lacks sufficient big-spending advertisers and the broadcasters lack the caliber of personnel – reporters and producers – needed to do justice to current affairs coverage, he told PLUGGED back then.
No moment put Urban’s competitiveness in the field of current affairs programming to test better than 2015 when government pushed for digital migration. The migration meant all TV broadcasters had to phase out their analog TV transmitters and relay their signals using digital technology.
The implication of this mandatory migration on a TV like Urban was that it necessitated investment in infrastructure (especially equipment) needed to deliver high-quality and timely content.
Bush commented; “Investment in an organization like VG takes a bit of time. You need approvals, budgets and things like that. We were playing catch up. Those who were prepared like NBS TV and made strategic investment with things like Live Units, it propelled them to what they are today.”
Adding that the other problem came with the elections. “Urban TV being under VG which is a government mouthpiece, in every election cycle, normal programming ceased. If the President was in Kaberamaido launching a campaign, you had to broadcast that.”
Retaining the primary audience (youth majority of whom are not enthused by politics) which had been lost during this long election period was always difficult.
Mwesigwa’s opinion on what led Urban off its course is more inclined to a case of Management wanting to milking a cow they weren’t feeding.
“They had an idea of what they wanted – young people. But they didn’t not have a sales plan for young people. Branding alone doesn’t work if you are not selling it well,” Mwesigwa intimated.
Management’s argument was that the market didn’t understand Urban TV’s offering. But those then charged with production and programming argue it’s the people responsible for selling Urban to advertisers that never understood the product.
“I’m a salesperson. I’ve been selling for 6 years. Sales is rooted in value. People give you money based on what you are providing. Here we are creating a product that has old salespeople who only know how to sell visibility. Like how you go to pitch to a brewery and all you’re selling is visibility. The brewery needs activations. They need to see product moving. So, you have to think outside the box.”
He describes some of the initiatives then, such as shifting from shooting the breakfast show in studio to say restaurant lounges, as an attempt to give real value to advertisers who needed experiential marketing.
“The way they (VG sales team) were selling Urban was as ‘enyongeza’ (add-on). They were selling Bukedde TV first and then Urban second, yet they were supposed to sell them separately. Urban needed a dedicated sales team that understood what young people want,” adds the creative who now runs Vidiyo in Business, an outfit that produces visual content including TV commercials and Wazo Dazo, a talent search and entertainment company.
Today, VG’s revenues are still dominated by print which accounts for almost half, followed by broadcasting (radio and television) outlets, commercial printing and others. And one would argue the Group’s leeway to experiment with new concepts is smaller today than it was a decade ago when the economic atmosphere was much kinder.
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.
VG’s revenue dropped by 21.3 percent with income from advertising falling by 5.4 percent to Ushs 51.2bn. Newspaper circulation sales fell 12.5 percent to Ushs 11.9bn, the fifth consecutive year the income stream has receded.
Mwesigwa doesn’t mask his disappointment in government which in spite of its limitless resources could not support a youth platform that was under its purview, in a country where young people make up majority of the population. In his view, nothing best demonstrates the lack of will to cater to the needs of the under-35 demographic than Urban’s story.
“If you have the biggest youngest population and you have no channel dedicated to these young people, they are left to go to Middle East to clean houses and commit suicide,” he says, adding; “There’s no national guidance plan for youth. If you have young people, you have to reach them. How do you reach them? You know how they consume information.”
It was government’s attitude – the sluggish way of doing things and lack of cut-out targets – that led Urban in the abyss it finds itself today, Mwesigwa adds.
“The best that could happen to Urban was to make it really really private. Give it out to an entrepreneur who is tied down to KPIs.”
After four years at the Industrial Area-based broadcaster, Mwesigwa threw in the towel. He would later take on a similar role at Next Media Services where he was in charge of branding their channels. In hindsight, the fact that he opened people’s eyes to what was possible, is what he prides in the most.
Like Mwesigwa, several other on-air talent that had cut their teeth on Urban but quickly gained star power began to leave the station. Unknown to Management, its conservative approach on how to deal with this talent that was beginning to wield influence, would come back to bite.
A source revealed that presenters were employed on non-compete terms. Yet VG was not willing to part with competitive pay in order to compensate their loyalty. For example, Gaetano Kaggwa split his mornings between Capital FM and Urban TV. This arrangement had increasingly gotten VG Management uncomfortable as they saw it as a conflict of interest. Yet they could not afford to hire him on Xfm (Urban’s sister station).
Bush still believes it’s not the end of the road for the channel, and that there’s still an opportunity for VG to resuscitate it. While he doesn’t get a kick out of the channel that Urban had metamorphosed into, he preens in “the baby” that he and his team conceived back in 2011 and is “glad to have been a part of a team that pioneered something that still forms conversation.”
Beyond the Awards, props from industry peers and the fact that many staffers at VG to this day praise ‘the Bush Administration’ – as Bush Baby’s tenure at the helm of Urban is colloquially referred to at 19/21 First Street, Industrial Area – there are invaluable moments that gave him endorsement like none other.
On a trip Bush took to Nairobi together with members of VG’s exco including Kabushenga himself, he was surprised to hear Patrick Quarcoo speak highly of Urban TV and the impression it was making in Kampala. Quarcoo is chief exec of Radio Africa Group, the Kenyan media conglomerate that owns Kiss 100, Classic 105, Kiss TV and The Star newspaper among other subsidiaries.
“Patrick asked Mr. Robert Kabushenga ‘I’m told in Kampala there’s a wave called Urban TV. What’s this thing and what have you done with it?’ and Mr. Robert told him ‘This skinny guy seated right here, I don’t know what he did but that’s the man you should be asking’,” Bush recalls.
“I mean, it was amazing.”
Asked which local broadcasters have since filled the vacuum – catering to the youthful demographic – left by Urban, Mwesigwa can’t cite any. And he strongly believes relegating young people to second-class citizen status has everything to do with the common misconception within boardrooms, that young people don’t buy.
“If you look around, the youth buy clothes, the youth eat, they drink, they attend concerts. How do you say they don’t buy? There’s a certain force working against young people. Because of their erratic behavior. Erratic doesn’t mean bad behavior, it means that’s how young people are,” argues Mwesigwa.
