Metro wins six at National Communications Awards; rebranding as Pan-African TV

Metro TV Ghana and its sister organisation, Original 91.9 FM, under the Ignite Media Group, grabbed six honours at the third edition of the National Communications Awards, held over the weekend at the Labadi Beach Hotel.

Metro TV was adjudged the Best Television Station of the Year. Its flagship programme, Good Evening Ghana, also won TV Programme of the Year, whilst the host Paul Adom Otchere, won TV Show Host of the Year, and Media Man of the Year.

The Sports Journalist of the Year award went to Michael Oduro of Metro Sports whilst the last award to the conglomerate went to Pomaah Kyekyeku of Original 91.9 FM, as Radio Newscaster of the Year (Local).

The prestigious awards ceremony was organized by Rad Communications in partnership with the Ministry of Communication and Digitalization, under the theme; ‘Transforming Ghana’s economy through digitalization.’

Touching on the transformation behind these multiple awards for the brand, Managing Director, Ignite Media Group, Kayode Akintemi, indicated that these achievements can be attributed to the rebranding agenda that the new management embarked upon barely six months ago with the objective of positioning the group as a lead Pan-African media organisation on the continent and beyond.

Adding that the rebranding has affected practically everything the organisation does as it has brought in some new sense of urgency in everything being done and everyone has seen a reason to put a hand on deck to ensure every task is achieved perfectly and within stipulated time.

“We are in a season where we are rebranding, pushing boundaries and doing some great new things. Our intention as an organisation is to do everything required to announce our new arrival as authentic, reliable, dependable and an organisation with integrity that is true Pan-African Channel.

“Since I took over as MD of the group in June, we have done everything necessary to reposition Metro Tv especially as Pan-African channel and we started working aggressively to remove all contents that did not sit well with our goal and introduced more robust programmes toward the goal,” he said.

He emphasized that within a matter of two months, reviews and remarks from the public pointed to the fact that people have noticed the reformation going on and are quite impressed with the significant turnover.

Additionally, existing contents such as news bit, news flash, news night, among others started taking new turns and twist to stories that were not usually with what people used to see. Development journalism was given prominence and a disaster like the Keta Tidal Waves was given enough coverage to ensure the public is well informed and that the station becomes the voice and eyes of the people.

Furthermore, the MD reiterated that beyond infrastructure investment under the new management, there have been a massive continuous investment in human capital in terms of training and development of staff, as well as bringing on board more experienced personalities.

Competition/Long Term Goal

With regards to local competition in the industry, he indicated that the dream is to grow beyond borders and become big on the continent like the CNN, BBC and Aljazeera, therefore it is not in competition with the other TV channels doing well currently on the local terrain.

“We have the personnel just like the BBC, CNN, Aljazeera and the others. And so, we can also do exactly what they are doing and even more if only we would put our hands to the equipment that we have got.

So, we do not have a reason to be worried about competition with the current top two or three on the local market,” he said.

Pan-African Vision

Mr. Akintemi stated that Ghana has always been regarded as the gateway to Africa and historical precedence showed how its first president Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, lived for Africa and was known as the true champion of Pan-Africanism. Therefore, a true Pan-African channel is more befitting of Ghana than any other country.

However, he indicated that it first has to win in the country before it can move on to other countries on the continent, hence the agenda is to first win on the local market and be recognized as such before crossing borders.

Metro TV, he said, will be building on partnerships and depend on collaborations with other top media organisations across the continent to deliver a true reflective content of what is happening in each state on the continent.