A Review Of Television Awards Ghana

TELEVISION AWARDS GHANA FESTIVAL is designed to engage all relevant stakeholders in television broadcasting and set to conduct structured annual awards for deserving television stations, programs, production crew and individuals in the industry. The Project also gives television viewers nationwide an opportunity to interface with their favourite TV Stations and Programs.

The project is being held in partnership with various industry stakeholders including the Ministry of Communications, National Communications Authority, the National Media Commission, Ghana Independent Broadcasters Association among others to establish clear guidelines for Ghana's migration from analog broadcasting to digital terrestrial transmission (DTT). This platform will also serve as an exciting medium to promote approved and trending industry information from the regulatory bodies for the consumption of the general public.

The project implementation strategy for the awards festival captures key inputs of both analog and digital television networks broadcasting in Ghana by enforcing the board directive that television stations shall appoint two members each to serve on the Faculty which decides ultimately on nominations and awards. This exciting platform also creates a healthy interface with the general public as "4 Popular Award Categories" shall be exclusively voted for by television viewers nationwide with The Faculty deciding on the "30 Outstanding Industry and Primetime Award Categories" approved by The Board through a technical peer review electoral college

Review :
The awards show,which was the first of its kind was held at the National Theatre on 10th of October 2014 .MC for the night was a former housemate of Big Brother Africa fame, assisted by a lady. It was beamed live on several television networks across the country. The stage and lighting was not extraordinary

Due to broadcasting time constraints, the nominees who where were earlier on being displayed on the giant screen ,had to be stopped. The MC's assistant, took over the responsibility of mentioning the names of nominees.

Several awards were given, interestingly, almost all the awards had the prefix 'Outstanding' this or that. The repetitive mentioning of 'outstanding' by the Mc started to make the event boring.

There were some musical interludes including a culture dance

The MC, who is also known to be a stand up comedian, occasionally dropped one or two jokes which most of the audience didn't get it, only a few laughed. At times he himself tells them not to worry if they didn't get the joke. Some of the jokes were what are described as 'expensive jokes' , of which he had to make it clear at the of the event its all for fun , nothing personal. He seemed to be 'talking too much' ,which once again he acknowledged.

Some of the award winners took the opportunity to advertise for free their upcoming show. One musician who performed also took the same step to advertise. That was quite opportunistic to do that on tv , wondering if they would be given an invoice to pay for that advert.

During the tail end of the event, one could not hear the names of the nominees. The award presenters just mentions the winners.

The last award which was the ultimate was a little marred by the person who presented it. In her bid to be 'funny' ,ended up screaming for the MC's assistant to mention the nominees. The request was never met, was a little embarrassing for that to happen on live tv.

On the whole, the event would be rated 5/10 , just average. Since this is the foremost event, they would be pardoned a little although there is more room for improvement. Lessons would be learnt by the organisers to make the next one better. They were also racing against time because GTv stops transmission at 1am, one could see the way the MC was trying his best to speed up the event. The event actually ended at 1:04 am.

We hope this awards scheme has come to stay and would see a better one next time around

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