Media personality calls out bosses paying millions to big name on-air talents
Dennis Sila, popularly known as Dee of DnK, hit out at media house owners paying millions to extremely popular on-air radio talents while paying others peanuts.
He claimed that other on-air personalities were being paid monthly what these popular radio presenters were making in a day.
Speaking on the Iko Nini? podcast, Dee said that most of these top radio personalities did not have the knowledge or capacity regarding media operations but were being paid big bucks to attract listeners.
“I went and told my former boss ‘my guy, I’m the assistant head of radio, head of production, do you think you could add me some more money in my salary?’ and he tells me ‘there is no money my guy, there is no money.’ One day he even removed his wallet and opened it for us to show that there was no money. That move finished us together with Kay. He and I had made our show extremely popular and the fans loved it very much. We sat down and realized we were struggling. Our show was a big hit but the pay was very little. We were touring everywhere to popularize the show, we were stars and we thought to approach our boss and tell him to review our salaries.
We went to him, he used to call us Deki na Kei, and we asked him to add something as he agreed with us that the show had become a big hit but he told us there was no money then. He asked us if we thought he was lying to us and that is when he opened his wallet for us. That was him showing us disrespect and we just left. What he was trying to tell us was we had no bargaining power to ask for higher salaries,” explained Dee.
Dee deduced that the former boss was trying to tell them to bring more money into the station then they could sit down and discuss salaries review. The duo then discussed how popular names were receiving hefty salaries while others were being paid per month what the top earner earned per day.
The Iko Nini? Podcast host, Mwafreeka, and Dee discussed how these big names were brought in to shake up the radio station listeners numbers and revenues but they had no impact when it really came down to getting in the mud. They also discussed the standardization of salaries even if they wouldn’t be equal as they called out the reality that some top earners earned up to 30 times more than other presenters and media staff. They also called out radio stations who still used this format of hiring big names to give them the edge when nothing changes at all except for the top earners’ voices being known more.
Dee has a radio career spanning several media houses including Royal Media Services, Media-Max Network, Ghetto Radio Limited and Standard Group PLC. He worked as a breakfast show producer and consultant, executive audiovisual producer, programs controller, twice as head of production, production and creative manager, social media manager and a radio presenter in the span of his media career spanning over 15 years.
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