Legacy media has gone digital and left the audience behind
Many legacy media houses have digital apps though which their audience can access e-papers once they have subscribed.
As the digital wave sweeps through the media sector, consumption of content has gone mobile. This means that if you are an independent content creator or a media enterprise, you have to ensure that your audience can access your product on their mobile phones.
At the heart of the access is the user experience. This has everything to do with a customer’s interaction with a company, its services and products and how effectively they can access it. Whether the customer’s journey is enjoyable or bumpy can make all the difference in turning a click on a link into revenue.
It is not enough, for instance, to develop an app for an e-paper or put a promo on social media to attract consumers if they have to endure multiple layers of log-ins and cumbersome steps to access the content.
Many legacy media houses have digital apps though which their audience can access e-papers once they have subscribed. These, coupled with other digital platforms like websites and social media pages, ensure that audiences can interact with content from their mobile phones. Should be easy no? Not quite.
As a practitioner in the media space, you would expect me to visit my e-paper apps first thing in the morning. However, despite installing these apps and paying for subscriptions, I find it hard to navigate most of them.
Most outlets use social media to prop up content on their digital platforms. Once I see an interesting story, I will naturally click on it and expect to be redirected to the website, which should be straight forward.
However, I get disappointed when I get redirected to find the story locked behind a paywall. Paywalls are not the problem, the issue is that even when I have paid for a subscription, I cannot access the content unless I log in through a rigid process that does not allow user interface flexibility.
This brings in the question of interoperability of media houses digital platforms. It should be easy for clients to move from one platform to another as long as they are subscribed.
Even if I have to log in, it is not possible to tell the date of publication of the story so that I open the right edition of the newspaper. I am left to peruse acres of pages to try and guess the date. If I have this type of experience on a daily basis, it is likely that I will shift to another platform.
This is just one example of how media enterprises have gone digital, but have failed to appreciate user experience and habits.
A new survey by the Media Council of Kenya (MCK) shows that to access news or entertainment content, 51.3 per cent use digital media (Facebook, Twitter, X and Instagram), 23.8 per cent use streaming platforms (Netflix, Showmax, Spotify and YouTube), 13.6 per cent use news websites, while 0.5 per cent use radio and 0.2 per cent television. The reasons given for respondents’ choice of platform used include accessibility (49 per cent), real-time updates (32 per cent), personalised recommendation (7.4 per cent), credibility of sources (6 per cent), user-generated content (3 per cent), access to Citizen TV (1 per cent) and business-related content (1 per cent).
“Platform choice is mainly driven by accessibility and real-time updates, underscoring the importance of convenience and timely content. Media players must therefore invest more in professional and high-quality content, as well as prioritise specialised niche content,” the study states.
This survey mirrors the findings of Prof George Nyabuga of Aga Khan University’s Graduate School of Media and Communications and Catherine Gicheru, the director of African Women Journalism Project.
“The resilience of Kenya’s media industry is being tested on multiple fronts. The increasing use of social media, particularly X, WhatsApp and TikTok, as primary sources of information challenges the role of traditional news outlets,” they write.
The MCK survey reflects global trends. The Reuters Institute’s Digital Media Report 2025 shows that engagement with traditional media sources such as TV, print and news websites continues to fall, while dependence on social media, video platforms and online aggregators grows.
“An accelerating shift towards consumption via social media and video platforms is further diminishing the influence of ‘institutional journalism’ and supercharging a fragmented alternative media environment containing an array of podcasters, YouTubers and TikTokers,”the report notes
The implications of this shift to the smartphone as the primary device for media consumption are enormous. The MCK survey offers evidence-based recommendations to media houses and other content creators, including optimising content for mobile platforms by prioritising mobile-first design, ensuring fast loading speeds, responsive layouts and user-friendly navigation to enhance engagement.
In addition, media houses should enhance accessibility and real-time updates, improve content quality and personalisation, diversify monetisation strategies, promote entertainment and educational content, encourage user trust and credibility, foster awareness of paid content benefits, and leverage social media for engagement and monetisation.
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The writer is the Media Monitoring and Research Manager at Media Council of Kenya.
