Baisiwa and Kafui Dey return with morning show on GhOne
Betty Ashun was how we knew her on Atlantis Radio then she went to TV Africa and she became known as Baisiwa Ashun. Eventually the name changed to Baisiwa Dowuona-Hammond when she got married nine years ago while still at TV Africa.
She would move over to TV3 as a news presenter and be there for a while before moving on to work on her own NGO and shop and other “moves”.
Sometime ago, not too long ago, when Joy FM was still trying to find a good balance for their morning show, Baisiwa found herself pairing with Kojo Oppong-Nkrumah on the morning show.
That partnership didn’t work well, in fact it didn’t work at all, and she had to move on to focus on her own family and her own small but burgeoning businesses.
That seemed to be the last time she would venture into broadcasting again.
However, broadcasters as we know them never say never and so when GhOne TV changed hands from the Multiple Concepts Group (MCG) to the Excellence In Broadcasting (EIB) Network and the idea of a morning show came up, Baisiwa’s name emerged as one of the people to be on the show as host.
Kafui Dey has for a long time been known as one of the country’s finest comperes.
Indeed, in the corporate world, if you needed that one MC to host your launch, AGM, staff durbar or any such event, there was always a 90 per cent chance that Dey would be considered.
He then appeared on our television as the host of the Ghana version of that global television reality phenomenon Who Wants To Be a Millionaire…of course ours was known as Who Wants to Be Rich for the mere fact that we could never have paid a million to a winner.
When the announcement was made by the producers that they were looking for a top notch presenter to be a quizmaster ala Chris Tarrant, Kafui Dey wasn’t the guy you had in mind considering he had not done much television at the point though he had had previous experience on Kapital Radio in Kumasi and Choice FM in Accra.
I recall that I was at the launch of the show at the Holiday Inn Hotel and when he was announced as the one to quiz people and ask them if that was their final answer or want to call a friend there was no uproar.
However, he turned out to be the perfect choice for the show as he did very brilliantly as host of Who Wants to Be Rich. His voice, his demeanor, his interaction with the contestants and others on the show was great.
When Starr FM launched some 16 months or so ago, it was Kafui Dey who emerged as the man to host the morning show for the station.
Something he did for one year before being replaced by former Radio Gold and PM Express presenter Robert Nii Arday Clegg.
How Dey performed and how Clegg has and is performing on Morning Starr is a subject for another discussion.
For now though you may or may not have heard that come next Monday December 14, Baisiwa Dowuona-Hammond and Kafui Dey will be premiering a new show on GhOne.
The new morning show dubbed Gh Today will be the first major show produced on the channel since the takeover by EIB.
I have seen photos of the duo on Twitter and I have seen them rehearse for the show and it seems to me that the anticipation and more than that, the dedication they have for this show is very strong.
They know they are coming into a very challenging show and have to do as much as they can to succeed.
There is Patrice Amegashie and Kokui Selormey on Viasat1 who have been doing well for a long time now and then there is the TV3 panel with Martin Dartey and others (let’s face it, the swashbuckling quadruplet of Nana Aba Anamoah, Sandra Ankobiah, Ama K. Abebrese and Benny Blanco is no more and the replacement doesn’t strike in the cometpetiton as they would have done).
Then there are all the other morning shows that currently run on pretty much all television stations on both free to air and digital.
It is definitely not easy out there, the competition is in cutthroat mode and both Dey and Dowuona-Hammond on the one hand and the production team at the station know that this new venture will not be a walk in the park.
As tough and as daunting as the task ahead of them seem likely to be, the duo and their handlers are undaunted as they believe this show will be a definite hit when it is introduced on Monday.
“Our plan is to make you late for work,” was how Dey put it when speaking about the show earlier this week.
Will it be good enough to make people stay home a while and watch before setting off to work? Do these two former television presenters have what it takes to make Gh Today the must watch morning show on urban television? We shall definitely be watching and listening.
IS WINSTON ON 3FM THE NEW OPPONG-NKRUMAH?
I had heard that Paul Adom-Otchere was the host of the drive time or late afternoon programme on 92.7FM. Those who have some modicum amount of good memory will recall that 92.7FM until recently was a station known as Channel R.
The frequency, 92.7FM was acquired by the operators of TV3 along with XFM 95.1FM with the view to making former into an English broadcasting station and the latter into a local language broadcasting station.
Recently, Media General (the parent company) tapped Max Fugar who for a long time was the head of sales and marketing at Multimedia Group but left to GBC as Marketing Director for almost two years, to run the radio side of the business.
So back to what I was saying. I had heard about Paul as host of an alternative style late afternoon show and I wanted to listen to know what new thing he has to offer on radio after staying away for such a long time.
But the voice I heard wasn’t that of Paul. It was another person. My first inclination was to stop the car and listen carefully to be sure it wasn’t Kojo Oppong-Nkrumah I was listening to. The frequency on which I was should tell me it wasn’t him, but the voice was so much like him I would doubt it.
To make it hard for me, the person on the radio wasn’t mentioning his name. Indeed I listened for him to interview the leader of the Central Region youth group advocating for Hannah Tetteh to be chosen as President Mahama’s running mate, and then listened to him interview the leader of the Volta Region youth group advocating for Hon. Doe Adjaho for the same position.
I continued to listen as he put both men on the line to debate each other and virtually take the Vice President to the cleaners and to determine whether their advocacy wasn’t ethnocentric. I also listened to him interview the KNUST lecturer who talks a lot about political issues lately and who came to the defence of the Veep and chastised the two protagonists.
I don’t remember at which point I tuned off, but throughout this time that I had been listening, he never for once mentioned his name and though I had figured out from the interviewing style that he wasn’t Oppong-Nkrumah, it would be good if I knew who it was.
Just this week I tuned in to listen to their morning show and it was the same voice. Again, I listened for a while and he didn’t mention his name. It was when I tweeted about it that others came to my aid to tell me he was called Winston Amoa.
I have since listened to him more because I like his voice. Great radio voice. The kind that you go like “where has he been all this while” and wonder why it’s taken so long to get him here. Besides the voice, he is a good interviewer, could up his skill a bit more but he’s got what you need to be where he is.
The other things he should work on to survive this competitive day part in my view is his music and humour. If he fixes these two and mentions his name a tad more (maybe not as often as Lexis Bill, but you get the picture) he will be a tough customer for many. Trust me, even without those Winston is on his way to becoming a threat.
Oh and finally the managers of the station chose a name. For a long time, they were referring to it as 92.7FM but since last Monday, I have realised they’ve been calling it 3FM.
So try and listen to Winston Amoah on 3FM on the morning show Sunrise and let me know what you think of him and his style.
@TheGHMediaGuru
