MIG to Battle UMOA in Court over attempts to Malign Latest Survey
Market Intelligence Group, Research Firm intends to drag the Uganda Media Owners Association (UMOA) to court for running a press release attacking its latest research report that places NBS TV as the leading television station in Uganda without factual basis.
Hours after the report was released at a colorful function at Emin Pasha Hotel on Thursday 3rd September 2026, a few individuals in UMOA crafted a press dismissing the findings as factually inaccurate, while promoting the work of rival research firms.
The press release was published on Daily Monitor, KFM and BBS TV, social media platforms three media houses that notably did not perform strongly in the survey results.
In response, legal representatives of Market Intelligence Group, sent a letter of intention to sue to UMOA and which was addressed to its Chairman.dated 4th September 2026.
Market Intelligence Group, imsists that it carries out its research professionally and scientifically and will demonstrate this with vast evidence in court. The company argues that the court process will sort this matter out.
“It is an insult to the research.teams that criss cross this country collecting data, the data analysts who sit and review this data, and the vast amount of resources spent moving even in the most remote of areas of this country”, a source at Market Intelligence Group said.
Media Industry insiders blame these developments on rivalry within the media industry in which some stations are unhappy with other stations performing better than them iin the surveys, yet there can only be one winner at a tine.
“This is nothing new. The history of media research in Uganda since 1994 shows that it has always been contested as stations which are not appearing in the top stations bicker with those at the top. We know that some of these people cannot stand the thought of NBS winning big in this survey. But these surveys have showed them winning in the past and they never had issues then because they were winning,: a member of UMOA said
Another source in the media industry said, that rival research firms who see serious competition brought by newer research players are capable of using individuals in some associations to protect their business interests
“They even tried to force government agencies to baptise one privately owned research firm. How do you do attemp such monopoly in a liberal economy? What is wrong with having results from another research firm to look at. There is nothing like a monopoly of generating research findings,” the source aaid.
The source added that “by the way some of those research firms.were covering only 50% of the country. It is only when they realised that Market Intelligence Group covers 146 districts that they.started stating the same in their advertisements. It is business politics”
As the competition for who draws more listeners and viewers and what methods can be used to determine this continue, the media industry will have the rare opportunity of court to determine whether the research processes and findings of Market Intelligence Group are robust.