Citizen TV

What is Citizen TV?

Citizen TV is a free-to-air national television channel in Kenya operated by Royal Media Services, a privately held Nairobi broadcaster. The company states on its own site that it was “founded in 1996 by Dr. S. K. Macharia”.^[1] Its television brands are listed as Citizen TV, Citizen Extra, Inooro TV and Ramogi TV, and its radio stations as Radio Citizen, Hot96, Ramogi FM, Inooro FM, Musyi FM, Egesa FM, Muuga FM, Mulembe FM, Wimwaro FM, Sulwe FM, Bahari FM, Vuuka FM and Bilitu FM.^[2]

Royal Media Services describes Citizen TV as “the number one national television network based in Kenya” and says it “has become one of the leading television stations in the country”. Those are the company's characterisations of its own channel and are reported here as such; the measured figures are in the audience section below.^[2]

The channel's news and sport output also publishes on citizen.digital, the group's digital news platform, which is the domain used for this entry.^[3]

What does Citizen TV cover?

Royal Media Services says Citizen TV offers “a wide range of programming, including news and current affairs, entertainment, sports, and lifestyle programs” and that the channel is known for live coverage of major events.^[2] The company does not publish a schedule of sports programmes on that brand page, and no programme titles or rights holdings for sport are listed there.^[2]

What can be observed directly is the digital sport output. The sport section of citizen.digital, retrieved on 19 September 2026, was football-led: a French national-team squad announcement, an English Premier League match report, a comment on England after the World Cup, an item on FIFA governance, and a report on court rulings affecting the start of the Kenyan league season. The only non-football items visible were golf, on a Kenyan player at a tournament in Entebbe. No athletics item appeared among the visible headlines that day, and the items carried no individual bylines.^[3] That is a single day's observation of one section and is recorded as such.

Sport is a small share of Kenyan television watching overall. The Communications Authority of Kenya's Audience Measurement and Industry Trends Report for January to March 2026 recorded sport at 4.7 per cent of television genre preference, behind news at 46.1 per cent, entertainment and drama at 21.5 per cent, films at 13.0 per cent and music at 11.1 per cent; on radio, sport was 13.94 per cent.^[6] The Media Council's 2025 survey put sport at 10.6 per cent of local-content viewership, the third most watched local category.^[4]

How large is Citizen TV's audience?

The Media Council of Kenya's State of the Media Survey 2025, from fieldwork of 15–25 April 2026 with 3,774 interviews across all 47 counties and a stated tolerable margin of error of 1.5 per cent at 95 per cent confidence, recorded Citizen TV at 55.2 per cent of ranked television viewership. The report notes that the channel retained first place while declining from 60 per cent in 2023. NTV Kenya followed at 17 per cent and KTN Home at 12 per cent. The same survey put Citizen Digital at 20 per cent of news-website visits, second to Tuko.co.ke at 32.6 per cent.^[4]

A second measurement points the same way on ordering but uses a different metric. GeoPoll's audience-measurement summary for January to December 2024 gives Citizen TV 79 per cent, NTV 67.7 per cent, KTN 67.1 per cent and KBC 64.2 per cent, and on radio Radio Citizen 72.4 per cent. GeoPoll states that the figures are “a high-level summary” rather than “actual cumulative reach”, and the published page gives no sample size, sampling method or confidence interval, so the percentages are not comparable with the Media Council's.^[5]

Royal Media Services publishes its own figures: “7m+ tv viewers per day”, “10m+ radio listeners per day”, “52m+ social media reach per month” and “30m+ digital platforms monthly pageviews”. No methodology, measurement period or source is given for those on the company's site, and they are the company's own claims.^[1]

Context for the platform: the Communications Authority recorded 73 per cent of respondents having watched television in the previous seven days in January to March 2026, with 81 per cent of viewers on free-to-air and 19 per cent on pay television.^[6]

Since when has Citizen TV existed?

Royal Media Services states that the company was founded in 1996 by Dr S. K. Macharia.^[1] That is the date of the company, not of the television channel. The company's own brand page for Citizen TV gives no launch date for the channel, and a launch date could not be established from a primary source retrieved.^[2]

The company's founding, the licensing of the television channel and the launch of the citizen.digital platform are three separate events; only the first is dated by a source retrieved here. Royal Media Services is privately held and does not publish annual reports, so no filed document was available to date the others.

Why does Citizen TV matter in Kenya's sport?

Its measured reach is larger than the depth of its sport desk. Citizen TV was recorded at 55.2 per cent of ranked television viewership in the Media Council of Kenya's April 2026 fieldwork, the highest single share in that ranking, and Citizen Digital at 20 per cent of news-website visits, the second-highest.^[4] Because 81 per cent of Kenyan television viewers watch free-to-air, a free-to-air channel with that share is where a large part of the country sees a sporting event that is not behind a subscription.^[6]

Royal Media Services names sport as one of four programme categories on the channel, and the group's radio stations — Radio Citizen was measured by GeoPoll at 72.4 per cent on its own metric for 2024 — extend that reach to a listening audience for which sport is 13.94 per cent of genre preference, a considerably higher share than on television.^[2][5][6]

The qualification is in the output observed. On the day the sport section was retrieved it was football-led, displayed no athletics index and carried no individual bylines.^[3]