NAIROBI
Kenya's three leading media houses Nation Media Group, Standard Group and Royal Media Services switched off their signals at around 8:30 pm on Monday night in protest against a decision the High Court that allowed the conversion from analogue to digital to take place.
The judge ruled that the media houses case was self-serving, since the media groups were involved in all meetings and participated actively all through the process.
"We have to allow the conversion to digital," said Justice David Majanja.
The switch-off, however, was not well-received by Kenyans, who, from different social media platforms, expressed their anger at what they termed as "media dictatorship", using the hashtags #MediaBlackoutKE and #DigitalMigration on Twitter.
Following dismissal of the case the media houses announced their resolution to appeal.
"In compliance with the judgment we are left with no option but to go off air," the media houses said.
Speaking to AA, the media houses' lawyer Paul Muite said, "We seek to appeal and on the basis we requested for a stay so as to appeal, but the judge declined."
"We have instructed our lawyers to appeal against the high court decision in the court of appeal" said the media houses in a note to their viewers.
"We are pursuing other avenues to resolve the issue so that you can enjoy your favorite channel" read the note.
Standard Group's KTN, Nation Media Group's NTV and Royal Media Services' Citizen TV all ran the same message informing their audience of the switch-off.
The process of signal distribution has been restricted to two providers PANG (Chinese) and SIGNET (South African/ Government).
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