Who owns K24 tv station?

Almost every Kenyan has had about media outlet Kenya 24 which is popularly known as K24. The company has stadily risen from a small outlet serving Nairobi residents only to become the first television stations broadcast their content online. K24 has also developed to cover the whole country with Media Max also rising to become one of the media giants in the country.

With all this attention around Media Max, its ownership has always remained a complected puzzle. This completion has been added to by the fact that politics is always dragged whenever the ownership is mentioned.

Brief History of K24

K24 was founded by Rose Kimotho who was running Kamene radio station at that time. She was looking to add a television station to what was then a steadily growing media company. At first, the station was broadcasting only in Nairobi as they could not afford a nationwide coverage.

In 2009 when the cost of running the television station became unbearable, she sold the station and Kameme FM to TV Africa Holdings Limited. The real owners of the company are not known but it has been connected to Kenyatta family.

TV Africa Holdings later transformed and re-branded to Media Max after acquiring several media companies.

The rise of Media Max

Media Max started as TV Africa Holdings when it had one television channel under it and that is STV. TV Africa then acquired K24 which it branded and gave a national coverage. After buying K24, it sold STV to Aljazeera before it started buying radio stations.

In 2012, TV Africa Holdings changed its name to Media Max after which it acquired Milele FM and Meru FM radio stations from other media companies.

After bringing the two radio stations under its control, Media Max went ahead to buy Kenneth Matiba’s People’s Daily newspaper which it went ahead to reduce it’s price from 60 Kenyan Shillings to Zero making it the first free newspaper in Kenya.

Media Max has went ahead to buy Maiyan FM adding the number of radio stations under its control to four that is; Kameme FM, Milele FM, Maiyan FM, Meru FM and The People Daily newspaper.