Opinion: Let's boycott reality shows

Since the inception of competitive reality shows in the Ghanaian entertainment industry, little or nothing has been heard or made of both participants and winners of these competitive shows. We write this article with a heavy heart from collating our findings of what goes into the making of these so called reality shows.

Right on top of our heads we can speak of well-known reality shows such as Mentor, Miss Ghana, Born Stars, Stars of the Future, Talented Kids, Ghana’s Most Beautiful, Vodafone Icons, MTN Hit Maker, Miss Maliaka and “The Next Big Thing in Gh Hip Hop” that have all failed to promote and propagate names of their winners and yet proceed to call for new talents.

NB: The Trace Report isn't writing this to favor or discredit anyone, instead; we as entertainment pundits are only pursuing the good of the Ghanaian entertainment industry.

TV3 network has been a forward patron in television reality shows and we must credit the quality and originality of their productions yet season after season we hear nothing of and from the winners of their reality shows. They either organize some fancy vacation or compensate them with money and desert them to their fate.

We all can recall the Tatatulato saga and the mentor 6 winner who is currently pig farming, talk less of the contestants of the Ghana Most Beautiful show who now double as pageantries and marketing leverages for their sponsors.

Viasat 1, ‘our number entertainer’ totally forgot to entertain their viewers with Born Stars reality show. Our entertainment friendly telcos’ who we hoped to alter trends only made mockery of themselves, as Vodafone failed to make Icons from the winners of their Vodafone Icons reality shows and MTN decided to produce a mediocre version of Nigeria’s Project Fame and named it Hit Maker.

We reserve our remarks on Mr. & Miss Ghana as the organizers already have issues to deal and their controversies have no space in this article.

This brings us to the mother all controversial reality shows Charter House. As if displaying the ignorance of some of their Miss Maliaka contestants on national television at the audition stages was not enough, they proceeded to produce yet another reality show for their Queen which lasted only two episodes during her one year reign. The next big thing in GH hip hop really was a unique concept and though its production was questionable, we believe it couldn’t have been any better but the question still remains, what has been made of the winner Strongman?

Hmmm three years ago, when the very talented Emmanuel Yawson emerged winner of Stars of the Future, we honestly believed the organizers would have invested in his talent since his kind was rare but after winning, it was like he cursed them because nothing has been heard of the show nor himself after three years.

We know that the producers and organizers of these reality shows will cook up flawless PR’ mechanisms to defend their blunders after reading this article but we at the Trace Report are not interested in whatever excuses they have, we only wish that this piece will serve as a wakeup call to all stake holders in the reality show industry and halt using their platform to explore the talents of the innocent and in the name of helping them use shows to fill their pockets with sponsors money.