Recently the Communications Authority of Kenya (CA) announced that broadcasters would be required to allocate 40 per cent of their programming to local content.

This is just the beginning. Within four years, the broadcasters are expected to scale this up to 60 per cent.

What this means, essentially, is that local radio and television stations must find local content to fill up the space, currently dominated by Mexican soap operas on TV and foreign music on radio, across their 24-hour programming.  

There are two views regarding whether this is a good or bad idea.

From a government perspective, the push for regulation is meant to force media owners to invest in local production, rather than opt for the easier, cheaper option of buying third-rate soap operas from Mexico.

In order to meet the 40 per cent local content quota, there must be significant production of local movies, documentaries, music and interviews among others, yet the ecosystem to support local production is not as cheap as most people would imagine.

HEAVY INVESTMENTS

For example, producing a movie requires heavy investments in both equipment and technical expertise, ranging from scriptwriters, actors and stage designers to editors, producers and distributors, among others.

Furthermore, a 30-minute production may actually take three weeks to put together. Now think about producing such a series, once per week, four times per month and forty-eight times per year, and you will realise why most local stations may avoid sustaining local productions.

It’s obviously cheaper to buy Mexican soap operas and fill up our airwaves rather than invest in local production. What the government is saying here is that cheap is eventually expensive, in terms of lost opportunities to fruitfully engage the youth within the creative industry.

The alternative view to the local content policy is that current productions are of such poor quality that they would not merit any airtime.

Furthermore, forcing stations to broadcast 60 per cent local content contravenes the liberal nature of our broadcast industry.

Broadcasters want the liberty to choose what content to serve their consumers.

WHAT'S LOCAL CONTENT?

If consumers prefer Mexican soaps, so be it — after all it's their taste, their choice.

No one should therefore purport to dictate what is good for the consumer by subjecting them to the so-called local content quotas. Besides, what exactly is local content?

Would a film such as The Lion King, with its African theme, or Out of Africa, with its Kenyan theme constitute local content?

What of the movie 12 Years A Slave, in which our very own Lupita Nyong’o played a leading role?

What about those documentaries on Kenyan wildlife that dominate NatGeo Wild on satellite TV? Do all these films qualify as local content despite their overwhelmingly foreign production?

How are we going to determine what is local content, in other words? Will the decision be based on the theme, the script, the cast, the location, the production crew or mixture of all of the above?

MORE QUESTIONS THAN ANSWERS

Whatever the case, how will we stop Kenyans from simply switching channels — away from the local broadcasters whose content maybe deemed too local — and subsequently continuing to watch their preferred foreign content on other channels?

This might effectively mean local stations will lose "eyeballs" and the associated advertisement revenue to the foreign competition, which in turn may mean we are losing rather than creating local jobs within the creative industry.

Clearly, there are more questions than answers in the local content debate. However, one must remember that you can come up with local content without necessarily creating local jobs.

The government and regulators must therefore think through the local content policy in order to ensure the job creation intended is actually achieved rather than frustrated.

Mr Walubengo is a lecturer at the Multimedia University of Kenya's Faculty of Computing and IT. Twitter:@jwalu email: jwalubengo@mmu.ac.ke