MultiChoice and M-Net will hold the 8th Africa Magic Viewers' Choice Awards in Nigeria in 2022, will add DStv channel showing live festivals and events from across West Africa.

by Thinus Ferreira

MultiChoice and M-Net West Africa have announced that that it plans to hold its 8th Africa Magic Viewers' Choice Awards in 2022 with the Nigerian-centric awards show that will return after another year's absence in 2021 due to the ongoing global Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic, with MultiChoice that will also add a DStv channel showing live festivals and events from across West Africa.

MultiChoice and M-Net West Africa last held its Africa Magic Viewers' Choice Awards, the 7th edition on 14 March 2020 with a packed hotel auditorium audience, after which MultiChoice had to warn its thousands of MultiChoice and M-Net guests who physically attended in Lagos, Nigeria that they were likely exposed to Covid-19.

In 2021 MultiChoice and M-Net didn't organise any Africa Magic Viewers' Choice Awards due to Covid-19 and never officially announced that it's cancelled for this year.

MultiChoice didn't have the AMVCAs in 2019 and revived it for 2020 after a year's absence,  meaning that the pan-African awards show for the continent's film and TV industry has been an on-off, on-off event for 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022.

At MultiChoice Nigeria's MultiChoice Content Showcase event that was held on Thursday in Lagos, Nigeria, the pay-TV operator announced that the 8th Africa Magic Viewers Choice Awards will be taking place in 2022 again.

Busola Tejumola, MultiChoice Nigeria executive head for West Africa content and channels, also announced that MultiChoice will be adding a new DStv channel in 2022 showcasing live festivals and events from across West Africa.

DStv’s MVCAs and AMVCAs still a go as Africa’s TV biz brace for the impact of growing coronavirus fears.

by Thinus Ferreira

MultiChoice is continuing with the big productions of the 2020 DStv Mzansi Viewers' Choice Awards (MVCAs) in South Africa, as well as the 7th Africa Magic Viewers' Choice Awards (AMVCAs) in Nigeria - both set for 14 March - as Africa and South Africa's TV biz brace for the impact of growing coronavirus fears.

With confirmed Covid-19 coronavirus cases in Nigeria and South Africa - as well as some other African countries - and the high likelihood of more cases being reported in coming days, weeks and months, the television and film production industry in South Africa, as well as across the African continent, is largely taking a wait-and-see approach, anticipating a level of disruption but not changing or cancelling any plans for now.

So far no events or productions have been cancelled or scaled back with the making of television that is a highly social industry, requiring studio audiences and a steady influx of guests and analysts for TV talk and news shows, live audiences for televised award shows, as well as contestants for the flurry of reality series.

MultiChoice that revived both the MVCAs and AMVCAs for 2020 after a year's absence and with both set for the same date of Saturday 14 March in Lagos, Nigeria and Johannesburg, South Africa respectively, says next Saturday's live televised award ceremonies are both still a go.

Collectively thousands of people from various countries across sub-Saharan Africa, including TV and film executives, on-screen talent, crew, media and members of the public will converge on the Eko Hotel in Lagos and the Ticketpro Dome in Johannesburg respectively for the shows.

MultiChoice and M-Net didn't want to speak on the record in response to media enquiries about what additional precautions and changes the pan-African pay-TV operator is making to the organising, production and logistics of the two award shows given the serious issue of the arrival of the novel coronavirus in Africa.

Speaking to background a MultiChoice representative told TVwithThinus on Thursday afternoon that the pay-TV service "is monitoring the situation closely and taking it day by day".

Meanwhile Clover South Africa carried on with a media event this week for the 9th season of the advertiser-funded reality show Tropika Island of Treasure on SABC3, while SABC2 is going ahead with a press screening set for next week of some of the channel's new local TV productions.

For the time being production is also continuing M-Net's latest 8th season of Survivor South Africa entitled Survivor SA: Immunity Island set to film soon for broadcast in September.

South Africans from across the country are chosen by the production company Afrokaans to fly internationally to an as-yet-undisclosed island to compete in the next season of the local version of the castaway reality show.

BBC Studios Africa is continuing with a media event and press screening on Saturday of its new documentary series, Seven Worlds, One Planet coming to BBC Earth (DStv 184) for a gaggle of local and international guests in Muldersdrift where the Ndlovu Youth Choir is also set to perform.

While British broadcasters like the BBC and ITV have now started to draw up specific coronavirus plans as the spread of the disease is starting to disrupt production schedules and media events, there has not been any public statements yet from the likes of the South African public broadcaster or its SABC News division, e.tv or e.tv News and eNCA division, MultiChoice, M-Net or StarSat about what they might be doing differently in light of the virus presence and its spread across the continent.

Multiple American and international broadcasters, as well as streaming services, continue to cancel meetings, media upfront events and media engagements as they also cancel attendance at conferences and festivals, while some international filming productions are also being reconsidered and curtailed.

M-Net asks for more entries from Southern Africa for the Africa Magic Viewers Choice Awards - while barely doing anything to actually publicise the awards.

M-Net is now asking for Southern Africa and for people working in film and television in Southern Africa to please "enter more" for its Nigerian-heavy and badly done Africa Magic Viewers Choice Awards sponsored by MultiChoice.

Well, on a personal note I simply must weigh in: In my opinion the entries and number of entries from South Africa and Southern Africa for the Africa Magic Viewers Choice Awards are so dismal because M-Net is so hopelessly bad at actually promoting and publicising it!

If even the media in Southern Africa are struggling to just be able to cover it and report basic information about it, I don't know how filmmaker and TV producers and talent are supposed to actually really know about it in the first place and that the Africa Magic Viewers Choice Awards exists.

I don't know why it's so bad, and why nobody in Southern Africa and South Africa seems to take any responsibility for the publicity of the Africa Magic Viewers Choice Awards.

If the M-Net organisers of the Africa Magic Viewers Choice Awards want to complain about a lack of entries from Southern Africa for this shabby, messy awards show, take a good, hard, long look in the mirror.

All I can share is my own, personal experience of trying to cover the Africa Magic Viewers Choice Awards - and I still actually try! A lot of South African and Southern African press don't know and can't care less.

I can just imagine how other journalists in South Africa and other Southern African countries won't even bother, have given up, or are simply not even interested since they're getting nothing, and can't care less about yet another award show that doesn't communicate properly.

At a press conference (which basically none of the journalists who went there even bothered to report on) at the Eko Hotel in Lagos, Nigeria where the 4th Africa Magic Viewers Choice Awards 2016 took place on Saturday night, Wangi Mba-Uzoukwu, M-Net's regional director for West Africa called for more film entries from Southern Africa.

Well, I don't know whether Wangi Mba-Uzoukwu is aware, but there's definitely a big, big disconnect between M-Net in the rest of Africa, especially in West Africa, and M-Net in South Africa - a case of the left hand not knowing (or caring) what the right hand is doing as far as the Africa Magic Viewers Choice Awards are concerned.

"We did not receive more entries from Southern Africa and so we urge film makers to come out and participate," said Wangi Mba-Uzoukwu.

Well, Wangi, how about M-Net actually steps up the effort in promoting and publicising the Africa Magic Viewers Choice Awards and improve the media communication and publicity effort with the Southern African press?

Currently its hopelessly basically non-existent.

I can only share my own experience as a South African journalist and TV critic - the one where since September 2015 I had to ask M-Net and MultiChoice numerous times for information about the Africa Magic Viewers Choice Awards in order to write and report basic stories like this.

Even back in September last year I noted how South African film and TV makers and the media are simply not being told and kept in the loop  as far as the Africa Magic Viewers Choice Awards are concerned.

Every single time (and it happened during last year's run as well) there was a press release for the 4th Africa Magic Viewers Choice Awards, I had to ask for it, and try to track it down and find out who possibly issued it.

Every single time I asked other longtime TV critics and journalists if they perhaps got it or got anything. Every single time they said no.

On Sunday, the day after the latest Africa Magic Viewers Choice Awards, yet again no press release from M-Net or MultiChoice, not even about the winners. I had to hunt to find out if there perhaps was something.

If Wangi Mba-Uzoukwu and M-Net want to see better participation from Southern Africa, an easy thing to improve and actually put in place would be the very bad line of communication from the organisers to the press in Southern African countries and South Africa.

If relevant media gets more information, more people will read about it and possibly more people will actually know about it and care to enter.

At the moment people don't know, don't care and neither does a lot of the media.