Monrovia – Randall P. Jackson always wanted to be a movie star, but he’s now becoming Liberia’s foremost emerging new media mogul.
Report by Alpha Daffae Senkpeni, [email protected]
His sight is set on the future. The 37-year-old is keen on revolutionizing the country’s television sector. His innovation – coated with sacrifice and hard work – is propelling his less than five-year-old firm to an unprecedented fame in the West African nation that is still legging in new media platforms.
See Jackson as an enigma for traditional television. The confident young man is armed with a techie aptitude. He’s amassing huge credit for his contribution to the blossoming social media television platform – Kreative Mindz Television or KMTV.
A Humble Beginning
It all started when Jackson got a job with the state-owned television in the mid-2000s.
As a tech savvy lad, he wanted to explore the world of digital media. Back then, analogue equipment made life difficult for audio-visual production in Liberia.
He would later earn a brief scholarship in a digital migration course in the People’s Republic of China. There, he discovered the inspiration of converging traditional and social media.
Jackson was part of the first generation of young Liberian media practitioners looking into the future when traditional and social media would be blended.
And for him, China was the perfect pedestal to swot how new media was evolving into potential business opportunities.
“When I was there (China), I took key interest in new media, while others took the trip as one for site seeing and tourism,” he said of his trip during a recent interview in his studios down town Monrovia.
“For me, my interest was to help the Liberia Broadcasting System move into digital migration but then all those things I learned there (in China) could not be applied there (LBS) for some reasons I didn’t know.”
Jackson thought that he was locked in a box at the state broadcaster. So, exploring other potentials was a new epoch.
“I felt we have passed that stage (analogue), and people were waiting to get information, so I knew just by taking a mobile phone you will get to many people on the spot through the internet,” he said.
He was ardent about using portable but sophisticated equipment to disseminate on-the-spot information. That phenomenon was a complete breakaway from traditional news reporting considering that Jackson had limited editorial experience at the time.
However, he ventured deep and quarried into new media.
The First Attempt
So, starting his outlet required a team. And he was lucky to assemble young like-minds that would commit to making sacrifices. It was a daring endeavour; the kind that would require spending personal resources amid enormous socioeconomic challenges.
It was a team of nine young men. They first turned a small room into a studio and began producing high quality short films, music videos and comedy skits.
But that first setup of what should have been a production company would later collapse mainly due to scarce resources compounded by a hostile market.
Nevertheless, they bagged some recognition from out of the country. That was the niche to striving further.
The Breakthrough
Couple of years later, Jackson gathered the leftovers of his failures, reinventing the original idea into a new firm now dubbed Kreative Mindz Studio, the parent of popular social media television – KNTV.
He and his crew started by using just a smartphone to live stream events on Facebook since it’s the most popular social media in the country.
“Our first major live broadcast on Facebook was the inter-high school debate at the YMCA (in Monrovia) and later on we started covering the press briefing at the Ministry of Information,” he said.
The crew was later recognized as the first media outlet to unswervingly live stream on social media in Liberia.
These events were mostly covered free of charge free, Jackson said, adding that the intent was to gain relevance in the media landscape by attracting more followers on social media.
“The next big one was our coverage of the Miss Liberia in December 2016, when we had 8,000 live views and the final video went to over 400,000 views.”
It was a defining moment for them, but 2017 would later bring more relevance.
KMTV basically live streamed almost every political event held in Monrovia during the elections. For on-liners, KMTV was a go-to-place for footage of electioneering activities.
By then, Jackson was receiving loads of requests daily, asking his crew to cover political or other events.
“They saw us as people who could just take things live, so they asked us whether we could cover events, and so many people started following us,” he recalls.
Few months later, thousands of Liberians in the diaspora began relying on KMTV to follow happenings back home.
Jackson and his team were, however, stuck with their original plan: using the coverage of the elections to market their outlet. They were later taking proposals to political parties, asking to provide free coverage of respective events.
“We saw that if something is happening here, instead of recording it and later post it, we thought it’s just good to go live right there and everybody will watch it and you will get live reactions,” he said. And it would later steadily pay off.
Deep inside the election year of 2017, social media subscribers were already fascinated with the marvel of KNTV. Many would directly give story tips to the crew, asking for coverage.
“Most of the time, I spent my whole night going through messages on our page to know what our viewers and subscribers are suggesting,” he said.
As the demand for live streaming on social media increased, Jackson and his crew grew more innovative. They had discovered that Facebook was allowing multiple live streams. And that means they could cover more than one event at the same time.
“It was like we did not care what was happening and where [it was happening], we just created a network of four persons [crew members] and provided live streaming.”
“Nobody was sponsoring us; our urge was just sacrifices. People were not sponsoring us; sometimes we did not have transportation. People will see us walking and say – ‘these KNTV guys don’t have a car?”
Jackson recalled that there were insinuations of “a political hand” funding their initiative. He says he often struggled refuting the ‘fallacy’ while keeping his plan thriving.
“We only wanted to get the news to the people because we knew people were interested,” he said.
More Trusted; More Relevant
As Jackson’s new media firm began relevant, his heart grew bigger. He and his team are still savouring credits from international organizations after the elections.
The European Union, National Democratic Institute, ECOWAS and the National Elections Commission recognized them for reporting on the 2017 elections.
Later, when the crew provided live coverage of the 2018 West Africa Football Union (WAFU) tournament hosted in Monrovia, there were over 10,000 more new subscribers in a week’s time. Liberians – home and abroad – followed the live broadcasts on social media. It again solidified the firm’s presence in the local media industry.
Traditional competitors were squealing. It was perceived by almost everyone that KMTV had beaten local traditional television stations to the game. Again, that was a stimulus into the future for them.
The Art of ‘Kreativity’
Visiting KMTV studio gives you a steer into their innovation. There’s few equipment operated by a dedicated and ingenious young team.
Jackson is now opting to turn his KMTV into a full-time online television network, producing contents to serve diverse audience. It’s an audacious step beyond just live streaming on social media.
“We knew that people were following us; so we asked ourselves ‘are we just going to be an election station?’ we said no!” he said.
For KMTV, reinventing aptness is an invincible hallmark. For example, Jackson claims several other television stations in the country have similar equipment as theirs, but the difference remains the zest and commitment to revolutionizing television.
“I will tell you that they have the money to get even more than what we have, but it is just the willpower to do what you want to do with it,” he said.
“To cover the WAFU nations’ cup we needed nothing less than US$3,000 although some will need about US$10,000 to do replays or reverse angles and all that. But I will say you don’t need a lot to do more. You just need to know what you have and know how to use it.”
American network FOX was expected as the official broadcast partner of the WAFU tournament and was requesting US$300,000. But when the deal fell through, KMTV failed the void leaving a low budget burden for the organizers.
Ridiculously Huge Ambition
Jackson’s glimpse into the future of his firm is ambitious. It’s the kind that should never be doubted, looking back at the arduous path he treaded.
He’s investing all his savings into the success of the firm, and sees himself and the firm as the trailblazer for new media as well as the proliferation of the use of Facebook for media purposes in the country.
“We want to be a world class when it comes to broadcasting,” he said with a mien of doubtlessness. “We are only 25% into what we should become in the coming years.”
However, he’s optimistic about Liberia’s prospect into the new media industry within the next decade.
“Every Liberian will start to own a good (smart) phones which are not expensive and it might even get cheaper,” he said.
“I think it’s going to grow fast based on how internet is increasing in the country and later on we could work with GSM companies, use their towers and I think it’s going to be less than a decade to transcend to new media in Liberia.”
The firm also has its arms open to luring potential investors, whose have interest in venturing into the new media market.
“If you are out there you want to buy a share or invest by giving us loan or whatever, we are open to investors just to make sure that our country is put on the map (of new media in the world).”
“[One of] our target is to carry our Liberian players out there [in the foreign leagues], exposed the talents of our national leagues. Once we start carrying these leagues live, you have people all over the country or all over the world watching KMTV to see if they can come to Liberia to get players,” he said.
The firm is producing its own contents; moving from event coverage to producing original contents and talk shows, which is gradually gaining popularity by the day. The challenge remains staying the course and reverting into traditional media mode.
“That’s why, unlike all the media institutions in Liberia, we will be launching other channels to get interested people to go to the channel that suits them online.”
“There will be programs for everyone, accessible everywhere with internet connection. There will be channels for entertainment, politics and fashion, lifestyle and sports with a trace of Liberia in all the content,” he said.
These channels are expected to be launched in the next couple of months and would be on several online TV platforms.
Jackson and team have all hands on deck to emulate the module of international cable network like CNN, BBC and FOX News that have all excelled into social media broadcasting.
Their audience base is growing by the day with a huge amount in the diaspora. Internet penetration in Liberia is much lower and it’s compounded by the sparing usage of smartphones due to prevailing purchasing power.
Analytics of the firm’s Facebook page shows that there are subscribers in more than a hundred countries excluding Liberia.
KMTV is pretty much lucrative in Liberia’s small media market, but it is the Kreativity of young Mindz like Jackson that has been written in the history books for revolutionizing television in the country.