I bought a token number of shares of NMG in March. I’m not a fan on either of the listed mediahouses. I think they both face very difficult futures
I just put in a ridiculously low bid using some change I had in my brokerage account and my bid somehow traded.

Newspapers in Kenya are dying a long, painful death. The newspaper reading age is thinning out as elder folks die/retire. People under 40 see no reason to buy newspapers when every tiny piece of ‘newsworthy’ news is broadcast on twitter and blogs before it even happens

My guess is that corporates and organizations who have been a major customer for newspapers, will aggressively cut down on non essential expenses. Daily newspapers will be the first to go, along with 10 o’clock tea.

I don’t think paid online subscriptions will be a hit. Especially with rampant piracy of online papers which are then extensively shared on Whatsapp groups for free.

I recently saw Saf joined with mediahouses to make online newspapers available for 20 bob per issue. This is laudable, but too little too late.
For one, newspapers have been trying to sell online copies for years now. Joining up with Saf is an admission that it didn’t work out.

The safaricom partnership is going to inject a buzz into the whole thing, but that will fizzle out in short order.
We love to see Saf as a company that turns everything it touches into gold and so we are quite forgiving of past duds such as Masoko and Big box.

But while Saf my not save the patient, its platform offers a wider market for online newspapers. It is a good thing. The beauty of online newspapers is that costs are miniscule. No printing paper, no press machines to maintain, no distribution network to support.

Online papers can be wildly profitable. A 20-shilling online copy can have better margins than a 60-shilling physical copy. But if you lack a sizeable market, you will just have huge margins on small revenues.
Of course you have to take into account Saf will take a cut too.

When the two papers capitulate, we may never notice it because their owners are mediahouses with radio and TV businesses, all in different states of health. These radio and TV businesses will be left supporting the patient even while he is on life support possibly for decades.

A quickly evaporating market isn’t newspapers’ sole worry. Shrinking Ad revenue will be an even bigger worry.
Even pre-corona, there were ominous signs of impending calamity.
For one, GoK, a major ad space client had proved an horrendously unreliable payer.

Second, the fact that a major mediahouse hosted a dinner, or whatever it was, for their then best advertiser group - auctioneers - says a lot about the economic prospects for everybody else, including the media houses themselves.

If the above dinner story is accurate, I bet the newsfirms will have to host an even bigger auctioneers’ dinner post corona.

Aside from that, advertisers are going heavy on placing ads directly on celebrity Youtube channels, where I think, there is more efficiency in audience targeting at lower costs.

Thus I see no need for mediahouses to make any significant capital investments in their print lines in future. What they should be doing is divesting wherever possible. Make the newspaper units as lean as can be. No heroics, no drama. Slowly cut back.

Get as much cash back as possible and put it into other units or better still, give it back to shareholders. Then wait for the next campaign season.