Tahidi High actor Geoffrey Githae has expressed optimism that the digital media platform will open plenty of opportunities to content creators in the country.
Speaking at the regional Storymoja festival in Nakuru last week, Githae who is commonly known as Teacher Karimi said one of the opportunities will be brought about by the need to fuse art and literacy in learning institutions.
“Due to digital migration the mushrooming televisions and radios will need local artists to create local content which the Kenyan audience can easily identify with,” he said.
That he opined can only be achieved
“through the incorporation of personalities who have skills in creative arts.”
Githae said that there is a need to sensitize the society about the necessity of nurturing talents such as writing, acting and dancing, a task he felt should be accomplished by county governments through creation of talent academies at the grass root level.
“These days children are not taught creative arts in schools yet the fact remains that some of them can perform very well in that field as compared to academics and eventually earning a living out of it.”
He critiqued the notion that one cannot excel in life if they aspire to take up careers in the performing arts saying it is to blame for low talents in the field in many developing countries as compared to developed countries.
“It is obvious that parents have a role to play when it comes to modeling the future careers of their children and due to their materialistic and egocentric nature they discourage the young ones in venturing in the creative arts and thereby failing to give children a chance to pursue their area of interest.”
“Eventually we have ended up with people who work so as to earn a living yet the lack passion in their work.”
Githae who hails from Nakuru acts as a tough disciplinarian in the Tahidi High which airs weekly on Citizen T.V. He speaks with a deep voice an accent.
Apart from offering opportunities to content creators the digital platform has come plenty of opportunities to those wishing to invest in broadcasting industry.
A number of local T.V stations have come up broadcasting local content, some of them, in local languages. Such stations include Njata T.V, Three Stones among others.
During the last World Press Freedom Day celebrations marked in Nairobi on May 4, 2015 Cabinet Secretary in charge of Information, Communication and Technology (ICT) Fred Matiang’i said the digital platform would soon be applied to F.M radio stations in the country.
This signals that there will be as plenty opportunities of digital broadcasting opportunities to radio content creators as it is currently to T.V.
By Lorna Abuga.
