The One Show: Anita in, Joselyn out
It could be described as the end of an era, because for four years, Joselyn Dumas had appeared on our screens during weekdays as the host of The One Show, the flagship lifestyle show, on Viasat1 TV.
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Sadly we won’t have the screen diva appearing in our homes again when the new season of the show rolls in October this year.
In her place will be Anita Erskine-Amaizo, the one woman that many would agree is arguably the biggest Ghanaian female television presenter at the moment. She comes on the show with a wealth of experience that transcends local television.
Dumas is not the only one who is not returning to The One Show as her co-host for many seasons, P.Y. Addo-Boateng will also not come back when the show returns with a new season.
Part of the reason P.Y. won’t return is because the show would be focused more on women related issues than on the entertainment related issues that his partnership with Dumas produced in previous seasons.
My initial observation of The One Show was what I wrote about it in 2010 that it was “an eclectic one. It is not entertainment, not health and thankfully not political. It is like a lifestyle show that looks at all these things from an angle – social point view – by bringing people to tell their story.”
It however became a kind of entertainment show and it appears the people responsible for content at Viasat1 hold the view that the show took a turn that they were not too happy about and therefore the need to steer it back. They are hopeful that the person who could do that well is Anita.
In 2010, when I reviewed the show, I made four observations about Dumas, that was before P.Y. was added as co-presenter, and one of those was that the person who should host the show should have been Anita Erskine. She was the show’s producer at the time too.
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“I have four things to say about the presenter and that would be it. One, she should lift the questions off the paper or prompter and ask them as her own - she should not read them. Two she should get a grasp of the show and present it. Three Anita Erskine should get off the flip side as producer and sit in front of the camera; this is her kind of show, unless some legality debars her from doing that. Four they should keep the girl and coach her till she perfects the art,” I wrote back then.
Following that though, it must be said, Dumas improved her game and hosted the show well and I am glad to say that she said, on at least two platforms that I heard her on, that that particular criticism by me spurred her on to work hard and perhaps what helped her to improve.
As you may know, Joselyn Dumas has grown with the show which gave her the opportunity to host other big events and television shows such as At Home With… on DStv.
Anita Erskine-Amaizo will come to The One Show with an impressive collection of television shows she has presented. They include Making Of A Mogul, Cooking With…. and Pamper Your Mum – three popular shows on the DStv.
If you have been watching Viasat1, especially their morning show, This Morning, you would not be told that the female dread-locked co-presenter of the show, Kokui Selormey, is very heavily pregnant and need to be given a break before she delivers on the set one morning.
That is exactly where Anita Erskine-Amaizo who recently took part in the Vlisco Women’s Month Dare To Dream campaign will restart her Viasat1 journey. Before the end of July, she will sit in to co-host the station’s morning show in place of Kokui Serlomey when the latter goes on maternity leave.
Anita will co-host the show with Patrice Amegashie until Korkui returns in the first week of September to get her show back from Anita and then the latter will come back after one month to host what will become Jocelyn Dumas’ former show in October.
Anita was the host of the season two of TV3’s Mentor in 2007, but she had her first encounter with television at Metro TV in 1997 (remember the Bold and Beautiful omnibus series?) after which she decided to take a long break to travel and study from 1998 till 2006.
It was upon her return to Ghana that she hosted Mentor, M-Net Africa’s Studio 53 and other shows both on local and continental television channels.
The big question is, considering the height Dumas took the show and how she stamped her authority over it, what can Anita Erskine-Amaizo do? Anita is good, very good, there can, no iota of doubt about that, but Dumas had a four-year head start and thus will take a lot of effort to change that, in my view.
I am sure P.Y. will say, “hey, why is nobody mentioning me here?” Well, let’s face it dude, you were always in the shadow of Joselyn and she covered all the good things you may have done on the show. Wish you all the best in your endeavours.
The Castro Conundrum
As I write this piece on Wednesday morning, the puzzle that had engulfed the entire nation since Sunday was yet to be solved. The whereabouts of the body of Theophilus Tagoe or Castro Destroyer as he is known in showbiz circles and his friend had still not been found.
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I am very sure we would get around it sometime very soon and yet the mere mystery of not finding these two people who went jet skiing at Ada over the weekend would be found.
However, the sheer intensity of keeping the nation on tenterhooks for such number of days is not palatable at all.
Making the issue worse than it ought to be is the fact that many faceless people are creating so many baseless rumours about the reasons for the missing of the two, where they are likely to be, what is happening to them and a litany of hogwash that will fill the Korle Lagoon. Worse of all is that, there are so many ignoramuses among us who believe these cock and bull stories.
Social media is like a double edged sword, when it is good, you can use it for the best of things and when it turns out to be bad, it is very bad. In this case of the purported drowning of Castro, social media has been worse than anything you can imagine in the area of false rumours and allegations that need not be repeated.
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If it had remained on social media alone, it would have been bad but not as worse as it is now considering some of these issues have found their way to mainstream media – namely radio, TV and print.
It is possible that by the time you read this piece, the two people or their bodies would have been found and the matter brought to closure, but the cacophonous assertions, speculations and conjectures from Wednesday to Sunday has been very eerie.
This was a gentleman who has affected our music industry so much over the last decade. His music has been listened to and enjoyed by many local music enthusiasts, his stagecraft has been appreciated by audiences and pundits alike and his mere presence on the music landscape had been stupendous even if ephemeral.
Indeed, Castro started humbly from Takoradi and grew to become one of the biggest stars around and if you scan the music industry, there are only a few musicians who he has not had collaboration with. He loved to sing and so was always available for any such programme.
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He was for me the most complete artiste in the sense that he could rap and sing than most other musicians we have known around here. His falsetto, though sometimes off-key on stage, would always be remembered.
If, as the Marine Police has concluded, we don’t find Castro or the lady friend alive but do find or not find their respective mortal remains it is fair to say that he was a good musicians, who appeared in the 2000s and really paid his dues to the industry.
However, if they are eventually found alive and Castro returns to this trade we shall welcome him back with open arms and hope that he does what he had been doing well and even better. If this was a stunt PR gimmick as some have suggested, it would be the most expensive one ever made and the wound thereof would not be healed ever again.
Hope the conundrum is solved and soon and I am really not sure it is time yet to wish Castro to rest in peace. Let’s give it a little more time before we do that, no?
@TheGHMediaguru