by Thinus Ferreira
Saturday night's 19th Metro FM Music Awards, once again done by Bonngoe TV and Dzinge Productions from the Mbombela Stadium in Mpumalanga and described by one of its own presenters as "chaotic", was once again a shoddy and mistake-filled technical production - marred by numerous mistakes that marked yet another SABC1 live-broadcast embarrassment on-air.
The SABC's 2025 Metro FM Music Awards - done for the third and last year from the same stadium - once again had glaring problems and suffered from obvious and continuing on-air incompetencies throughout the night as an awards show production.
It meant that the SABC and the Metro FM Music Awards production and its organisers, once again failed in the latest attempt at trying to do a made-for-television, live-broadcast as far as viewers are concerned.
The excruciatingly bad production values were quite obvious in the mediocre sound and video, presenting, logistics and stage management, camerawork, directing, live editing as well as playout and transmission.
Why the SABC, Metro FM and the production companies failed to improve and correct mistakes from the 17th as well as the 18th MMAs and keep producing a failure grade live-broadcast awards show is unclear.
What has becomes clear, however, looking at Saturday's mistake-filled 19th Metro FM Music Awards, is that the SABC, Metro FM - and the production companies paid to mount the million rand awards show - neither have the capacity, or possibly even the willingness, to do look at past mistakes, to interrogate why it happened.
They appear impotent to prevent reoccurrences of basic problems and errors and new ones.
The result: A head-shaking disappointment with a 19th Metro FM Music Awards that embarrasses and makes the SABC, Metro FM, the Mpumalanga provincial government and South Africa's urban music scene look bad and amateurish.
Add Mpumi Mlambo's inane and thoughtless black carpet question of asking the deaf Miss South Africa 2024 Mia Le Roux who her favourite music artists is ("Within the music industry I don't have a favourite South African artist as I am deaf, so I don not listen to music").
Unintentionally, this inane interaction became an opening scene-setter for the night's never-ending string of on-air Metro FM Music Awards embarrassments to follow.
The 3-hour live-broadcast that was supposed to end at 23:00, "only" ran over by about 15 minutes - a shorter run-over than previously but still an indication of a production team that once again couldn't keep to the playout breakdown-binder to keep the X-cross stage show on track.
Luthando "Lootlove" Shosha and Siyabonga Ngwekazi, known as "Scoop Makhathini", were the main show co-hosts and did quite passable work as presenters.
The production also brought in Thato Madonsela, known as "L-Tido", and Dineo Ranaka as co-hosts of a breakaway section, serving as a go-to filler environment, mimicking as a "behind-the-scenes podcast".
It's here where a calm and collected Dineo Ranaka absolutely excelled as the night's best presenter by far for TV viewers.
This was despite being confronted with unexpected errors from the production team like when their lead-in section to the In Memoriam segment got botched since something was wrong, and the show and SABC1 had to go to a lengthy commercial break and then start the In Memoriam segment cold (with no introduction) after a break.
On-stage performances at the 19th Metro FM Music Awards included Black Motion and DJ Blackz, Usimamane, Lunga Mavuso, Mawelele and Naledi Aphiwe, KO, Rebecca Malope, Babalwa M, TKZee and closed out with the Focalists.
Bad sound quality marred the entire awards show playout, as well as as ongoing sound mistakes when the sound desk failed to mute mics, stage stand mics were either muted or off, and presenters and award-winners shouted into mics, making it virtually impossible to equalise that distortion.
Empty chairs - and showing them - once again abounded inside the Mbombela stadium, signalling to SABC1 viewers that they shouldn't bother to watch since people didn't bother to attend.
An apparent rent-a-crowd told to look excited and to clap during certain segments looked mostly disinterested when camera feeds switched to them. The entire show was underlit with bad lighting.
Camera operators didn't appear to know who was actually at the 19th Metro FM Music Awards, or where to find them, and neither apparently did the directors and floor hands.
This led to on-air embarrassment like a camera operator spotting someone moving, a clueless director then picking that feed as the live and tracking the person, only for it to then, for instance, not be Emtee. Cue the never-ending cringe.
The coup de grâce - or coup de disgrace - was the closer when, already running over time, the Mpumalanga premier Mandla Ndlovu couldn't read the autocue because of some error.
Embarrassingly trying to stall for time with his own filler talk while waiting to read the Song of the Year category nominees, he was eventually simply abruptly played off when the mistake couldn't be fixed.
This came after he told the in-stadium and at-home audience "no, there is a problem" and "I don't understand what I writing there".
The SABC and Metro FM's 19th Metro FM Music Awards done from Mpumalanga was bad. And bad again. Why? And why do those in positions of power and production remain silent and why is there no improvement?
With millions of rands spent to mount trash live television like this, questions must be asked.
Why is South Africa's TV industry, the SABC - as well as stakeholders like tax payers who are contributing to this live-broadcast through the Mpumalanga government who is paying for this - apparently fine with this type of mediocrity?
Why are a lot of people, including influencers and some news media, silent about what is right in front of their and viewers' eyes and unmistakable done so badly?
South Africa's film and TV industry, as well as live-broadcast variety programming - of which awards shows form part - can only improve and be done better if there is a concerted effort to want to improve.
That demands rigorous interrogation of mistakes, errors, omissions and a resolve to work to fix and eradicate them.
Unfortunately - and worryingly and sadly - it doesn't come across as if that's something the SABC and its Metro FM Music Awards organisers can, want, or are able to do.
South African viewers - and South Africa's film and TV industry - deserves better.
ALSO READ: REVIEW. The SABC’s 18th Metro FM Music Awards was once again a shockingly bad trash telecast
