MTN is one of the most innovative and creative brand in
Nigeria, I know a lot of you have issues with them (including me) but that does
not deny the fact that this company has been proven time and again to be miles
ahead in creativity and innovations. From their advertisements, their value
added services, community projects to their talent hunts and reality shows am
sure you will agree with me that they are a genius or let me say they have some
genius handling these areas because in some other areas, hmmm you and I know
MTN ‘na wash’. A lot of us still remember the
“Chris, where is the phone” advert
not to talk of the more recent Saka I don port ooo advert, the truth be said
MTN makes us enjoy watching adverts on TV, not to talk of ‘Who Want To Be A
Millionaire’ show and their Project Fame West Africa is undoubtedly the best
among its peers.
Project Fame West Africa (which I will refer to as PFWA
henceforth) is the best talent development reality TV show in West Africa. PFWA
has produced some of the country’s finest musicians since its inception 7 years
ago and all, I mean all of it past winners have gone on to become hits in the
music industry, from Iyanya, Chidinma, Monica and recently Olawale, you will
agree with me that PFWA has always produced stars.
Have you ever wait for a minute to examine why PFWA always
produce stars that after the show make their marks and become popular in the
music industry whereas rival TV shows like Glo Naija sings, Etisalat’s Nigerian
Idol repeatedly fail to match such feat? You will observe that we don’t even get to
remember the names of past winners of these rival shows whereas we can still
vividly remember who the fourth runners up of like 3 seasons ago of PFWA was.
PFWA has become this successful simply because of its
structure of operation what we can call its Modus Operandi. Rival shows all
have the same structure which differs from PFWA structure and that is why they
are not as successful. PFWA is structured in such a way that it will always produce
the best from the bests.
We have a panel of judges, the faculty and the contestants. The
faculty gives each contestant a task to do, a song to perform and they also
coach and tutor them so as to get them to give the best performance possible.
All the contestants perform at the show where they are scrutinized by the
judges pointing out their errors and areas they need to improve on. The judges
then select the 4 worst performance of the day and put them on probation. From
these 4 contestants, the viewers will save a contestant; the faculty one and
the other contestant will save 1 the other contestant not saved will exit the
show.
If you look at this structure properly you will notice that
it is guaranteed to produce the best out of the bests. A very good contestant
is likely never to be on probation throughout the show- we have seen this in
past seasons, examples include Monica, Chidinma etc. But this season MTN just
came up with the greedy idea of putting all the contestants on probation after
the 3rd week. This act will surely increase MTN’s revenue from
voting but it will kill the quality of the show as it is the contestant with
the highest number of votes that get to remain in the competition cos we all
know that anybody that will vote due to the high cost of the SMS charge will
only vote for his/her friend or relative among the contestants regardless of
whether he/she is aware that the person is good or not. In other words, I can’t
have a friend or relative among the contestants and not vote for him/her even
if I realize there are better contestants in the show.
What this will result into is producing the contestant with
the highest no of rich friends and relatives (who could afford the high cost of
voting) as winner instead of the producing the best contestant as winner. This
is the system that rival shows are using that is making them never to produce a
true star. MTN following this system will surely increase their purse but will
speedily kill the quality of the show.
And we are already experiencing this in the exit of Shola (I
know you all agree that he is by far better than some of the contestants left
in the competition). Just look at the scenario that put Geoffrey, Shola,
Christian and Daniella on probation believe you me if the original system had
been used, none/just one of them would have been on probation.
MTN will truly make money from this new system but at the
same time they will kill the quality of the show, it is now left for them to
either choose to pursue money or the quality of the competition.
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