Koch FM is located in a slum in Nairobi known as Korogocho. ‘Koch’ is a contraction of the name ‘Korogocho’. This radio station was founded by a community youth group with funding from Norwegian Church Aid, which was the station’s main donor until 2016.82 The station also gets funding from what they refer to as ‘social advertising’ – announcing community events and projects at a subsidised rate. According to the team leader (as the station manager is referred to), in the 1990s youth groups formed in Korogocho for civic education using drama.
They also had a newsletter. Miss Koch, a beauty pageant featuring the girls from the slum, started in early 2000s, was a forum used to pass information to the community. All these were efforts to create a platform for dialogue among the slum dwellers about their experiences.
The station’s founders, a group of like-minded youth, had initially thought of making a film to highlight life in the slums, but later thought that a radio station was a better idea for the long term. Norwegian Church Aid (NCA) was the first donor. It got Koch the container that houses the station, and the initial broadcasting equipment. Koch first experimented at the World Social Forum held in Nairobi, where they had a homemade transmitter. They later got support from Open Society Initiative for Eastern Africa (OSIEA) to get a professional transmitter. The station’s core team decided to launch the station airing schedule, although not licensed yet.
Licencing was problematic, with the government regulator arguing that Koch FM was a front for a politician. Thus, the station was not licensed immediately. However, after negotiations
82 Updated in follow-up interview with Team Leader in October 2016
and months of waiting, the station was licensed in 2006. As detailed in station documents and during interviews with station management, key among the issues Koch FM addressed were corruption at the local level. For instance, to get official permission to repair or make improvements on their dwellings, the area inhabitants had to pay a repair fee which was not accounted for. As well, the administration of the Korogocho area was located in a political party’s offices,83 and consisted of village elders all personally appointed by the area chief.
Following campaigning on these issues via Koch FM, the repair fee was scrapped, and the nine villages84 that make up Korogocho are now headed by directly elected village elders. As such, the station feels that it has made an impact on the community since its inception. Its broadcast radius is three (3) kilometres.
The station has a core team of 10 staff supplemented by interns from media training institutions, who work at the station for 3 months. These students send their application to Koch FM on a regular basis. Koch FM staff interviews them and evaluates their capacity. According to the manager, “They can be from anywhere, but priority is given to those living within the Koch FM radius, especially because of adaptability to the slum environment. We prefer someone fast to understand the audience and environment and adjust to it” (MD1, Programmes Manager, Koch FM 2014).
Apart from the wish to disseminate useful development information to the community, Koch FM also had as one of its specific aims countering the negative publicity that characterises the mainstream media coverage of the informal settlement (Chiliswa 2013). The station seeks to offer an alternative narrative about the community. As outlined in the discussion about NCA, Koch FM has a community outreach team charged with organising meetings with community members to determine issues for the station to tackle. The meetings are held quarterly (4 times a year). The editorial team then meets the outreach team to plan focus areas for programming.
At this station, the interns outnumber the staff, and they are at the station for longer hours than most of the producers. While interns are at the station all day, most of the producers are present only for their specific shows unless there is a meeting to attend. Although the producers go by the term ‘volunteers’, the interns fit better in the ‘volunteer’ label as they are the ones at the
83 KANU youthwinger offices
84 Although Korogocho is an urban slum, it is demarcated into administrative zones termed as ‘villages’, which also are delineated according to ethnic groups
station all day every day without pay, while the producers are only required to be there for specific hours, and they (producers) often get basic costs covered. For the interns, however, the requirement to be at the station without pay is not necessarily a problem. This is because the radio station serves as a training ground to hone their all-round media skills including on-air presentation, which they may not be able to do at larger stations. In terms of work patterns, the interns’ core task is to source news items both online and physically and write news bulletins under the guidance of the producers, while the producers mainly deal with generating content for their individual show slots. At Koch FM, the news editor and the programme manager interchange roles, as between the two of them they manage the day to day running of the station.
At the same time, they are also producers, each hosting a specific show. When it comes to content production, they do not manage the other producers; instead, they act more like peers, and the producers are not explicitly answerable to them. It is only in terms of administrative issues that the producers defer to them. The management structure is outlined in Fig 4.
KOCH FM ORGANISATIONAL STRUCTURE
Figure 4: Koch FM Organisational Structure
Station Manager Finance Manager
Management Board
Producers Interns
Programme Manager News Editor
CONTENT PRODUCTION TEAM ateaTEAM
KOCH FM ORGANISATIONAL STRUCTURE
The station faces financial constraints, such as limited equipment. For instance, during fieldwork visits in 2014, the programme manager stated that the station had only two audio recorders, meaning that they could only cover two stories with live quotes at any given time.
In addition, the station at the time did not have a working generator, such that when there were power cuts the station went off air.
Similar to Kangema FM, this station is also situated in a government location: it is located in the chief’s camp in the slum, and shares its compound with the community social hall and local hospital. However, unlike Kangema FM whose location in government premises is designed to discourage people from visiting the station too frequently, Koch FM chose that location for security reasons and for easy access by the community. In spite of the station’s proximity to the chief’s office, the management is wary of receiving any government funding, which would usually be in the form of donations from the Constituency Development Fund (CDF). As explained by the programme manager, the station is adamantly against tapping into this funding source:
…because we don’t want them to compromise our sovereignty or our freedom…CDF is controlled by the political class. That means if we get funds from them, it means when an MP does wrong, we would not be at the forefront of saying exactly what he is doing wrong because we don’t want them to cut the funding. So we don’t want to compromise ourselves…how can you criticize the hand that feeds you? (MD1, Programmes Manager, Koch FM 2014)
This adversarial stance towards the government may be a result of the community’s experience with insecurity, including by the police. It presents the producers with a challenge in carrying out their daily work, as per the programme manager:
…they have seen a lot of unjust killings…these are people who have seen so much.
They are very sensitive….you see even for me here in the community, the moment I get a listener’s phone number, at times the funders want to have the listener’s name and SMS records of responses to the programmes, it’s normally difficult. You tell them you are taking their name to other people? They are not willing. They tell me “please, we respect you as a radio station that’s why we call and give our names, but we don’t accept, we don’t see it as being right for you to give our details to other people….because these are people who have seen their brothers being harassed, being killed, these are people who have seen their young men disappearing so… (MD1, Programmes Manager, Koch FM 2014)
This view was echoed by the volunteers and interns, who stated that they sometimes face difficulties in news collection because residents fear having their voices recorded, as they feel
it will expose them to risk: “unataka mi nikujiwe? Mi ndio ntakuwa mtiaji”; (ie “do you want them to come for me? I will be seen as the traitor”) (MJ 2014). The station’s social context is clearly a factor in its operations. Apart from generating topics addressing the social challenges faced, station staff also have to adjust their working patterns – such as not recording residents’
voices carelessly – in view of security considerations. In this case, instead of maintain the pretence of cordial relations with the government, the station has a clearly adversarial relationship based on its context.
Despite this expressed wariness, the station’s location at the heart of the slum, and sharing of premises with other community service institutions seemingly makes it an attractive venue for residents to access. For instance, community members walk into the station freely and sometimes even hang around to wait for the news to be written so that they can hear it ‘first hand’ when it is aired, and then give their critique directly to the staff, as will be discussed further in the production chapter.
According to the station’s founding documents, Koch FM aims to provide “a platform for the community to address their issues through information sharing, education and communication to promote social, political and economic well-being of its listeners” (Koch FM 2015). Its stated editorial focus is on areas such as governance, health, entrepreneurship, human rights, women and youth empowerment, children’s rights, environment, sports and religion. Its stated target audience is youth between 18 and 35 years old, living in Korogocho slums. This choice of demographic reflects Koch FM’s conceptualisation of itself as a ‘youth station’, despite its stated overall aim of providing a discussion platform for the whole community, and its vision of creating “an empowered community that celebrates its diversity and actively participate[s]
in its development” (Koch FM 2015).
In its core values, Koch FM aspires to remain independent of vested interests or external influences, and is committed to factual accuracy in what it airs, partly ensured through “the mandatory use of recording devices”. This is however not always the case, as will be explained in the station’s news production practices. The station also aims “to help audiences of all races, faiths to see events in perspective, and to understand their interrelationships.” In laying this out as a value, the station acknowledges the diverse mix of people who constitute the Korogocho community. They live in one geographical area and make up a geographical community, but have distinct differences which are not erased by the fact that they live next to
each other. They typify the heterogeneity that characterises urban populations, and Koch FM keeps this in mind, as will be illustrated in describing the station’s news production practices.
Most interesting among the station’s core values are the fifth to eighth, laid out below:
(5) Koch FM supports the principles of democracy as they are most widely understood, that is, good governance, transparency and accountability, regular, free and fair elections as well as social equity. We as well support the role of responsible and credible Civil Society Organizations in the promotion of democracy and good governance.
(6) Koch FM supports and promotes public debate on matters of national importance with a view to bringing about behavioural and policy change for the common good.
(7) As part of Koch FM Corporate Social Responsibility, we support and promote the protection and conservation of the environment whilst promoting sustainable development.
(8) Our editorial content promotes the national efforts of the people of Korogocho to develop and harmonize their institutions for the common good.
The fifth core value directly draws from the international discourse about democracy and governance 85, and makes a clear link between Koch FM and civil society organisations engaged in promoting this goal. Here Koch aligns itself with the civil society sector. Climate change, one of the main aims propagated by NCA, is apparent in Koch FM’s seventh value, which focuses on environmental conservation. Koch FM also sees itself as having a voice in national debates, through facilitating public debate at the local level. As such, Koch FM delineates itself as both a local and a national actor, as well as a supporter of supranational values. This aspect of how Koch FM positions itself is especially interesting in light of the legal requirement that community radio deal primarily with hyperlocal issues not dealt with by other stations. For Koch FM, the local, the national and the global are interlinked. As such, the programming addresses a community that is envisioned as not existing in isolation, insulated from external actors and forces, but rather, one that exists in relation to the external. Hence, the station aims to create a community public sphere that is not delinked from the national public sphere, but rather, that engages with the latter to debate matters of common interest.
85 See for instance ‘Characteristics of Good Governance’ on https://www.gdrc.org/u-gov/g-attributes.html, and
‘The 12 principles for good governance at local level, with tools for implementation’ on http://www.coe.int/t/dgap/localdemocracy/Strategy_Innovation/12principles_en.asp
Community Access, Interaction and Participation
In terms of accessibility, Koch FM scores highly for its listeners. In the group interviews, several listeners emphasized their appreciation for the fact that calls to the studio go through, unlike to bigger national and regional stations, the studio plays listeners’ requests quickly, and the calling rates to the station are cheaper than calling other stations. This sentiment was repeated in all the group discussions separately held with the different ages and genders in the community. In addition, community members walk into the station at will, as noted by the interviewer during field visits, and as expressed by the programme manager:
By the way they feel so free. You know they feel they own the studio. So they come.
You see all these young people outside here and the women there86, it’s not that they are workers at the station or so close to us. No, these are community members. You know we are speaking to our friends, our salonists, our neighbours, so they know us.
So they feel they own this project, they own this radio station. They just come. They can come here and make conversation till you think that they are people who work at Koch FM….They just walk in any time, because they feel like it’s part of them. And when we use their voices they feel like they are more into the radio. (MD1, Programme Manager, Koch FM 2014)
As the programme manager points out, participation in terms of accessibility to the station is a need that is seemingly well met by Koch FM for its community. However, much as the station management interprets this freedom to enter the station as something positive, it turns out that not everybody is thrilled by how accessible the station is to everyone. During group interviews, one striking comment was that:
This is our station, but you find that people enter the studio without permission. This contributes to poor standards of transmission. Because it is not everyone who knows the technicalities of presentation. It is best to leave the work to the professionals. The studio should be out of bounds – your friend should not enter the studio and spoil your work. (Interviewee 1 Group Interview 3, Koch FM, 14.11.14)
This sentiment was supported by the members in the group discussion, who went on to express that the station needs to come across as more professional if they want to be taken seriously, and not too ‘chummy’ with the community members. They then went ahead to give the example of other, commercial stations, which do not allow people access beyond the gate. This comment was somewhat surprising as one would imagine that the community is glad to have the opportunity to be engaged with a local media institution. Moreso because in earlier conversations, community members had expressed a wish to be more involved in the station,
86 The people she was referring in the conversation were around the reception area at the time of the interview
such as higher numbers being employed at Koch FM. From these comments, it emerges that the community’s yardstick for measuring Koch FM’s performance is drawn from commercial stations.
The aspect of professionalism is related to training those who volunteer at the stations. For such interns, community radio stations serve as a venue in which to gain practical media skills, ranging from newsgathering and editing to on-air presentation. This training of interns is part of Koch FM’s community empowerment role, but has the downside of productions which do not always sound professional. However, from the comments by community members, the wider Korogocho community seems to have little patience for their radio being used in this way, and would rather that such people (those not yet professional) remain in the background.
These contradictory interpretations of access by the producers and the community members express the dialectic of community-owned and managed media. On one hand, community members want to participate in the media production. But on the other hand, they do not expect amateur-sounding productions – they expect Koch FM to sound like the commercial stations that they tune in to. When it comes to ranking these simultaneous expectations therefore, the community apparently values professionalism over access.
Community participation in station management at Koch FM is not explicitly provided for.
The station has a management board consisting of the youth group that founded the station, but there are no elections or a mechanism in place via which the community can participate in the meetings of this board. Some of the board members are no longer in the area, as they got other opportunities elsewhere. However, they have not been formally replaced through elections.
According to the producers and station managers, the community gets an opportunity to express its views during community visits by the station’s outreach team, tasked with finding out community priorities for inclusion in future radio programmes. During group interviews,
According to the producers and station managers, the community gets an opportunity to express its views during community visits by the station’s outreach team, tasked with finding out community priorities for inclusion in future radio programmes. During group interviews,