Telenovelas can never be taken off our TVs – Entertainment critic

Nana Tuffour, a regular panel member of Kasapa Entertainment has said although there’s an upsurge in telenovelas aired on several Ghanaian Television stations, unfortunately it cannot be taken off entirely from the screens.

According to him, this is because film makers in Ghana still lack the technical know how to shoot good and quality series which can replace those television soaps.

“Our movie producers are jokers. An Indian or Mexican movie producer will use more than a year just to produce one particular movie in order to get a quality, long lasting movie. You sit there and use about one month and two weeks to produce a movie and you want to compare it to Mexican or Indian soaps. This people have good content for their movies compared to ours. Instead of condemning, Ghanaian movie producers should rather learn from them,” Nana Tuffour told Kojo Preko Dankwa on Kasapa Entertainment.

He added, the use of expletive in movies in the Twi language has lowered movie standards in Ghana. He lamented how the constant excessive use of the Twi language as a tool to disrespect and insult others is damaging to the film industry.

“Majority of our movie series now are full of insult especially with the local ones… what are our kids learning from this?.. If they want equal audience as the telenovelas then they should work on their movie content”, Nana Tuffour added.

However movie producer Christopher Nimo popularly known as Ashbowa who disapproved of Nana Tuffour’s opinion said it will be of best interest if telenovelas are scrapped since it’s taking over the movies and TV stations in the country.

“If our movies aren’t being appreciated by our own people then who will?. We always move from one TV station to radio station talking about how to remove them from our TV stations yet nothing has been done about it. There should be some law enforcement which will minimise the rate at which telenovelas are shown. This will help in promoting our local movies,” Ashbowa said.

Commenting on the enforcement of the laws to help curb the soaps shown on Tvs, the commander of Kasapa Entertainment, Kojo Preko Dankwa shared his thought on how disappointed the foreign movies have taken over local movies and yet authorities has done nothing about it.

“What happened to the 49 page of our cultural policy which state that TV and radio stations are mandated to do 70% of our local content and then 30% foreign?. It is the other way around now.

“It disgraceful to hear people say they prefer foreign movies to their every own movies. TV managers now go all the way outside the country just to buy telenovelas to be shown on TV, aired on radio and publish in the newspaper and nothing is done about it,” Kojo reminisced.

Recently, newly elected chairman of the FIFA Disciplinary Committee, Justice Anin Yeboah charged the new National Media Commission Executive over the sudden increase of telenovelas and explicit sex scenes on television channels in the country.

He said the dumping of telenovelas and the decline of standards on Ghana’s screens deserve immediate attention.

Speaking at the swearing-in of five new members of the National Media Commission (NMC) in Accra on Monday, the Supreme Court judge told the new executive to consider a strict enforcement of the Broadcasting Bill to strengthen the content monitoring and regulation of the electronic media and to bring sanity and decency in sections of the media.

“The damage all this inflicts on the moral centre of the youth in particular is incalculable, in this respect, article 164 of the Constitution which imposes national security, national morality and public order restrictions on the media begs for strict enforcement,” Justice Anin Yeboah stated.

The Supreme court judge said “it is sad that these regulations remain paper tigers” while professional excesses and ethical misconduct assume alarming proportions.

He was optimist the expertise, knowledge and semblance of the new members would be brought to bear on the operations of the commission and the media industry as a whole.