The election coverage league table

Once again the people of this wonderful country showed Africa and the rest of the world how elections should be held in a democracy. We went to the polls last Wednesday and by Friday night we knew who our new president was.

Granted that were some tense moments between when voting closed across the country and the declaration by the Chairperson of the Electoral Commission, we still showed during the election itself and the announcement that we are a nation that understand democracy and love peace.

Even before the EC boss would declare a winner, the incumbent President, John Dramani Mahama called his opponent who had won, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo to commend him and to concede defeat to him. That was so gracious on the part of the President and we need to be thankful for it.

In all this the one institution that has been commended greatly for the immense work it put into ensuring that people knew what was going on and tried hard to ensure that nothing was hidden from the Ghanaian people was the media.

I wrote about how the television stations were covering the elections in the morning and I feel that to close the chapter on the 2016 elections I need to give my view of who covered the elections best. Thus my league table here for the top four television and top three radio coverage of the election respective.

#1: ELECTION HEADQUARTERS: For me the coverage of the elections from Multimedia and Joy News for that matter was very well thought out and a culmination of all they had done leading to the elections across the country. They had the team smartly dressed in specially designed uniform with each member’s name embossed on it.

They had a big and great team including Evans Mensah, Dzifa Bampoe, Gifty Andoh Appiah, Israel Laryea, Malik Daabu, Gary Al-Smith, Raymond Acquah, Kojo Yankson, Francis Abban, Mamavi Owusu-Aboagye and others who all helped with the reporting, discussions with studio panel and correspondents as well as among themselves.

The icing on the cake was when they beat all others to project that Nana Akufo-Addo would win the presidential election.  For me they covered all the bases and emerged as the number one station during this election.

#2: ELECTION COMMAND CENTRE: TV3 is no stranger to election coverage. In the past they had assembled some of the top of the range presenters in the game and covered every blade of grass across the nation top bring election related information. This year also they came back very forcefully having invested in equipment and personnel to work their beats better than they did in the previous years.

The fact that the station’s owners Media Generale have invested in radio and thus have stations like 3FM, Connect FM and Onua FM as well as the news website 3news.com gave the station leverage it did not previously have.

When it came to the crunch, Bright Nana Amfo, Martin Asiedu Dartey, Alfred Ocansey, Paa Kwesi Asare and other presenters in suits and ties ensured that they had a good coverage. Just like the Multimedia set, these guys also had two sets for presentation and discussion. Also, their use of the results board was engaging and they had very mature analysts to discuss the issues.

My challenge with their broadcast and for which I left them a few times to see what was happening elsewhere had to do with their cautious approach. But that’s okay as in the end they also arrived where we all did. It was a great team effort and they in my view came behind Multimedia.

#3. EIB ELECTION HUB: In April this year, EIB Network launched its election coverage platform dubbed EIB Election Hub and gave indications that it was going to really make a big deal about this year’s election coverage. True to that it set up its election coverage on all platforms even when it was still working to fix television.

Come the election period proper and the station was ready with everything needed to make election coverage interesting, exciting and must-watch. They had the equipment, the presenters and the analysts to do the work. With Nana Aba Anamoah as lead anchor, Kemini Amanor, Bernard Nasara Saibu, Kafui Dey, Kweku Obeng Adjei, Abena Owusu Nyamekye as presenters and a Dr. Aning and Prof. Baffour Agyemang Duah as their lead discussants it was going to be a great one. I did not see Robert Nii Arday Clegg, who had been advertised as part of the team that would deliver the coverage?

For me where GhOne and Agoo for that matter (as it was simulcast on TV) beat everyone to the game was in graphics. Their images were clean and you could see that a lot of thought had gone into it. They could improve a tad on the personnel on the field and also on the general content they fed the public. However, considering as this was their first of such coverage, it was more than one would have expected of them.

#4 UTV: I think UTV took this coverage very seriously, just as the other stations. The difference though was that UTV seemed to have had a ubiquitous presence across the country than most other stations. They had cameras almost everywhere and once something happened they had it on the screens immediately.

In the studio was TK as the lead anchor and his female colleague with whom he worked the screen that showed how the results were going as they trickled in from the various polling stations, Constituency Collation Centres and the National Collation Centre. The people on the field reporting did a great job for UTV and need to be commended very well.

I felt that the look and feel could be better, except I am told that perhaps the target audience would not see it as I do, also I think the screen should be mastered a bit for a better presentation during subsequent elections.

The top five on radio in the humble view were: Joy FM, Citi FM, Peace FM.

This is the closure we brought to the election issues. Hopefully next week we move on to Christmas and other issues away from politics.