Raila had 9.6 million viewers watching him in presidential debate
The 2017 Presidential #DebatesKe attracted an average audience of about 9.6 million TV viewers countrywide on Monday evening, according to media research company Geopoll.
The company tracked television viewership from 5pm until 9.30pm on seven television stations: NTV, Citizen TV, K24, KTN News, KBC and Inooro TV.
To determine the total viewership, GeoPoll tracked an average of 523 viewers every half hour.
The debates were organised by Debates Media Limited, which brought together eight television stations and more than 30 radio stations, while the live feed was shared with many others.
RUNNING MATE DEBATE
The 2017 presidential debates were marked by no-shows. The running mate debate was only attended by Muthiora Kariara, running mate to Dr Japhet Kavinga Kaluyu, and he enjoyed a boost in profile with his Twitter followers rising by more than 8,000 to 10,200 followers.
The first part of the presidential debate, which included Dr Ekuru Aukot, Dr Japhet Kavinga Kaluyu and Prof Michael Wainaina, began at 5.30 pm, while the second part of the debate, which featured Nasa presidential candidate Raila Odinga, began at 8 pm.
Mohammed Abduba Dida opted not to attend the presidential debate citing discrimination.
On TV, the peak hour was 8.30 pm when 9.6 million people tuned into the broadcast to watch Nasa flagbearer field questions posed by the two moderators, Joe Ageyo of KTN News and Linus Kaikai of NTV, after the broadcast delayed for half an hour.
At 5pm, 6.6 million people were tuned into the seven TV stations to watch the debate. At 7 pm, when the first debate was coming to a close, there were 9.3 million viewers.
NUMBER DIPPED
The number dipped during the intermission to 8.8 million viewers at 7.30 pm before rising again to 9.3 million viewers at 8 pm. The top four TV stations were Citizen, KTN, NTV and KTN News.
There was also substantial coverage online. NTV’s Twitter broadcast via Periscope recorded 2,900 broadcasts for the first part of the presidential debate, while the second portion recorded 9,000 broadcasts.
On NTV’s Facebook page, a peak of 1,623 viewers streamed the first part of the debate at the same time, while there were 94,500 views in total.
A peak of 2,694 viewers streamed the second part of the debate live at the same time, while there were a total of 86,000 views. Citizen TV showed a total of 113,656 views on Facebook.
LIVE STREAM
The Debates Kenya YouTube live stream video attracted 14,313 views for the presidential debate and 8,126 views for the runners-up debate after it was uploaded.
There were 75,861 tweets written on the election from 5.30 pm to 10 pm on July 24, when the debates took place.
From 5.30 pm to 7.30 pm, most of the tweets referenced the three presidential candidates who took part in the first debate. Interest in the Jubilee and Nasa parties started to increase at 7.30 pm.
