Radio Africa Group on Friday, March 17 announced the closure of Kiss TV, the sister station of Kiss FM, Classic 105 and Radio Jambo.
In an internal memo seen by WoK, the closure was mainly attributed to financial constraints that saw the station stagnate.
Radio Africa Chief Operations Officer Martin Khafafa also thanked the Kiss TV staff for their efforts in ensuring that the station continued running.
“As you are aware our TV department has been unable to generate revenue despite the efforts involved to turn the station around
“All affected staff will duly be informed on the handover process by the HR team,” Khafafa said in the memo.
Rebranding
The closure comes barely a year after the TV station rebranded and introduced new entertainment programmes throughout the week.
This was the second time Kiss TV was relaunching in a span of two years after the last relaunch in February 2020.
Before that, Kiss TV had also been relaunched in 2013, four years after its launch in early August 2009.
Ownership
Kiss TV is owned by Radio Africa Group, a media entity based in Nairobi Kenya focusing on print media, digital communication and broadcasting.
The company is owned by Patrick Quarcoo.
He attended the University of Ghana where he graduated in 1980 with a Bachelor of Science in Administration, Marketing/Marketing Management.
He later proceeded to Manchester Business School in the United Kingdom where he pursued a Master of Business Administration (MBA) in International Marketing, Corporate strategy and Corporate Finance in 1986.
In 2017, he attended a 10 months Senior Executive Program at the prestigious Harvard University.
Although he didn’t study anything related to media, PQ had a great zeal and passion for journalism. After completing his Masters education back in 1986, he began hustling in the media space as a young journalist.
He managed to create six radio segments where he would report on what was happening and trending in Ghana.
He later submitted the segments to British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and luckily, three of the segments were taken.
The other three segments were taken by Voice of America (VOA).
He worked in Uganda for quite some time before quitting the employment sector since he felt that needed to take another step and do something more exciting.
He relocated from Uganda to Kenya in the late 90s and together with his British friend William Pike, who was an editor at Reuters, established Radio Africa Group in 2000.
William Pike took up the position of Convergence Director of Radio Africa Group and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of The Star Newspaper which was launched in 2007.
On the other hand, Patrick took up the position of the Chief Executive Officer of Radio Africa Group and steered the company into one of the best media entities in the country.