Faceoff: Nana Aba Anamoah vs Kwame Gyan

Something big will happen next Monday. No, make that two big things will happen on Monday, February 15 on two television stations in the country. Two things likely to change the State of Affairs at GhOne TV and or change the State of the Nation as we know it now through eTV.

Since going through very torrid times in the last quarter of 2015 following issues that came off Twitter, which subsequently led to her resignation from TV3, the television watching public had been waiting to see where Nana Aba Anamoah would emerge.

There were many speculations about which station would finally get her signature on the dotted lines. At the height of the speculations, some media broke the story that she would be going to Multi TV only for it to come out the following day that it is rather GhOne TV the news anchor and presenter had settled with.

The question then was, on which programme would she be placed and when would she start? We didn’t have to wait long to get that answer as over the last two weeks or so there has been a heavy promotion of the show she would be hosting on GhOne TV known as State of Affairs.

On the 39-second long promo doing the rounds on social media and elsewhere, Nana Aba talks about her new show as one that will treat all subjects because no subject is off limits and that they will be looked at from the point of news makers with the inclusion of listeners.

She also mentions in the video that the show will be start from 15th February and will air from 7pm. The video doesn’t mention what time the show will end, but I am going to hazard a guess that it is likely to be an hour-long programme. Maximum.

It seems as though it will be the major news programme on the station, not a talk show as some would think of it to be, but a news programme. It will be the first major news programme on GhOne TV since the station was established as the previous format didn’t have room for a mainstream news show.

No sooner had Nana and her new show been revealed than a new show on eTV was also promoted to start airing. State of the Nation, is the name of the show and it will start airing from 15th February, 2016; the same day on which State of Affairs will start showing.

The host of this one is Kwame Gyan. Yes the same Kwame Gyan of Airtel, just that he is no more with the telecom company as he resigned last month to join Global Media Alliance, owners and operators of eTV, YFM and Happy FM. He heads brands communications at the company.

Before joining Airtel, Gyan had worked with Newmont and before then he had stints with both Joy FM and Citi FM. His association with media started from the University of Ghana where he was a volunteer for the campus-based Radio Univers.

He has therefore been away from the media for a while – that is if you take away his daily rants, musings and opinion pieces on social media, his writing of entertainment related content for newspaper and online platforms as well as his occasional appearance as a guest on entertainment shows – and one wonders if he is not rusty.

Despite this he has a very wide following on social media, especially because of his political stance on many topics. He is known to share his view on any national issue regardless of who it concerns and that has given him both friends and enemies alike, but followers all the same, especially on Facebook.

The format of the show being promoted (as seen on the 52-second long video making rounds) it seems to me like a current affairs programme, offering a cross between a news programme and talk show. So it is not exactly the same thing as Nana Aba Anamoah’s show will be, but it’s all about the eyeballs.

One won’t be wrong to characterize Gyan as a rookie when it comes to television presentation, because, well he is a rookie. He doesn’t have that experience on television that Nana Aba has acquired over the years on both GTV and TV3 and so we have to wait and see how he comes through on the State of the Nation.

If you watch the two videos you’d realize that while Nana Aba was a bit more relaxed Gyan seemed too serious and stressed his words more.

We also have to say that on the balance of strengths vis-à-vis the number of viewers, GhOne is ahead of eTV, although according to sources there are efforts currently underway to increase the footprints of the latter in many other areas across the country which means by the start date Nana Aba is most likely to be draw more eyeballs to State of Affairs than Kwame Gyan would do with State of the Nation.

It is true that both shows will not air at the same time, and I must commend eTV for choosing a safer time for Gyan’s show at 8pm. GhOne went head-to-head with other news shows, especially TV3’s major news bulletin at 7pm. However, that does not mean there will be no competition for the two shows. So long as the issues won’t be any different from the other, I think there is some competition to be brewed on the stations.

Having said all these how is the public going to accept Nana Aba Anamoah following the manner in which she parted ways with TV3? How will she perform in this new role at a new station with a new team who would not know her style very well? Will she be a hit at GhOne as she was at TV3?

What kind of television persona will Kwame Gyan have? Will he be a more relaxed host or the acerbic social media – Facebook – character people on his timeline have come to know him to be? Is he cut for television? Can he do this?

We have between now and Monday 15th February at 7pm and 8pm respectively to witness the face-off between Anamoah and Gyan. We also have up till then to decide whether we are going to continue to watch their respective shows or just move on. Thankfully, Monday is not far away.

@TheGhMediaGuru