In Africa today, or should I say the world over, television reality shows are stealing the audience, the ratings are busting through the roof and the actors or should I say the participants depending on the one you are watching are gaining all the popularity while the producers are smiling to the banks.
Let me narrow down what I want to talk about to Africa, The Ultimate Search ended a few weeks ago with the top guy cashing a whooping N7million naira and a brand new jeep, which I don’t really mind, considering what they go through in the jungle for weeks of bad weather threats of wild life and poor diet, not to talk of test of skill and strength.
The Intern or Apprentice Africa, these also have good reviews and a wide audience especially in the corporate world, where youths are tested in marketing and managerial skills, with real life tasks of delivering for the said organization and the winners end up having a very good job coupled with the cash price and the brand new car to go along with it. Beautiful show too and sending out very positive vibes of how being the top notch problem solver in the corporate world can give you an outstanding life style.

Then there is the one in the entertainment industry, Next Movie Star, this has to do with the participants going through classes from respected actors in the industry and they get to act out short clips and the with time the best amongst them is giving a contract to star in a movies, with the other goodies that is attached to being the top actor/actress, there is dancing with the stars, behind the scenes with rock bands, behind the scenes with models and a host of other out there, but the one that has pricked my interest the most is arguably the most popular one in Africa till date and I am yet to get the aim or the goal of the whole show, when what I see is an obvious arrangements towards getting the house mates to engage in sexual promiscuity on live television, come to think of it what sells most on T.V these days .
Let me try and describe the whole scenario, they come into the house, six boys and six girls, youths with hormones pumping like wild fire, desperate to win the prize money of 100,000USD, knowing the craziest in the house or better still the wildest, which means taking showers naked on live television, For 91 days, 12 housemates selected from Angola, Botswana, Ghana, Malawi, Namibia, Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa, Uganda, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe will live together in the Big Brother House in Johannesburg, under the lenses of viewers across Africa. Each housemate will scheme and play the game hard in order to be the last man or woman standing to win 100,000 US dollars; while audiences watch every minute and every second of their lives in the house live on satellite TV. Not forgetting those hot and steamy shower hours where everything comes off in the full glare of the Big Brother lenses, and the organizers of the show in order to make this happen, they arrange a cozy, luxury two bedroom apartment with small rooms, and share the participants to be 3boys and 3girls to a room and they are welcomed with enough food, drinks, cigarette and music to swing into the mood of getting to know each other fast enough for action to start taking place in the house.

Funny thing is, I find it really fascinating how watching a group of people sitting around, talking, eating and sleeping? Can be entertaining, yet you get millions of fans going to bed late, because they are waiting for the housemates to go to bed first or hoping some action like what happened in the last edition will reoccur, some might say it’s the Shower Hour( the most watched session), but the truth remains, its gets a lot of fans hooked to the screen, even me…(lol) sometimes.
Thing is, I am still trying to find out what the real aim of the whole show is without sounding discriminatory, because I actually sent a text message subscribing for the channel from DSTV.

While I’d love to get your views about the program, because I remember there was a serious scandal in the last edition about the Nigeria girl (Ofuneka) being sexually molested, giving BBA negative reviews from around the world, I am also seeing a safe net being applied by the producers, which is, these shows are transmitted directly into the homes of viewers that consciously and knowingly subscribed for the program. Furthermore, the digital providers avails you the option of locking the station, so when you complain, you are more or less like someone complaining about the nude scenes in a Indecency movie you bought from a film shop. Plus, house mates always know what they are getting into before & during audition and are also well counseled before the real show actually begins.

My questions are what is the average Africa youth to benefit from Big Brother Africa which without a doubt has become one of the most followed reality series in Africa and M-net, producers of the show got massive auditions across the 12 countries for season 3. BBA2 received over 900,000 SMS messages; over 14 million registered page impressions and over 4 million viewed video clips on the show’s website and which of course means the organizers of this show are really smiling to the banks each season. My other question now being what value is being delivered? Or are we being westernized to the point where we aimlessly follow a show that is immoral and a vehicle encouraging immorality and promiscuity… but whatever you views are, if you are watching (like I am), it means you asked for what you are getting.

culled from , felixekpa.com

Hmm