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Tafadzwa Zimoyo
Last Saturday night was the National Arts Merit Awards ceremony and as usual our national broadcaster ZTV beamed the show live.

Surely, after several editions things should have improved all across the board.

Much of the blame obviously goes to the National Arts Council for their obtuse attitude at the repeated criticism directed at the awards.

Surely, by now they should be over the learning curve and setting the standard for other local award ceremonies.

I was at the awards and kept in constant touch with a few people watching the live screening at home then caught up with the recording from the decoder the next morning.

I am not surprised that a lot of people only stayed tuned to see the results, not for any entertainment value of the screening.

Sometimes the blackouts were the biggest problem. The picture quality was also not too great although that might have something to do with the stage set and lighting at the venue.

The problem was with the ZTV presenter on the red carpet.

Some critics said they should have chosen a more mature presenter because this is the biggest awards ceremony in the arts industry.

The lone presenter had nothing much to say, thereby calling all attention to her squeaky voice and sartorial disaster.

As for the main presenters that was another disaster.

Their dressing looked drab against the ugly black backdrop and they had no chemistry between them. Their energy was non-existent as evidenced by the lukewarm reception of the audience to their efforts to engage.

Who came up with the bright idea of having South Africa-based actor Leeroy Gopal as the main anchor? Seriously, those tired old jokes? Is this guy so out of touch with reality that he considers Zimbabwe as some Hickville where we have not heard it all already.

Then he referred to Deputy Minister Tabeth Kanengoni-Malinga as a he, honestly?

Was he supposed to be playing the part of a typical dumb blonde or something?

Another serious mistake was the seating arrangements for nominees. It took so long for some of them to get to the podium which was tedious enough for those at the event and possibly worse for the audience at home.

The list of things that could have been done better is endless and one hopes that NAC guys are not busy patting themselves on the back just because they did manage to host the awards.

This is one case where doing it is not enough, it has to be done well.

Would someone at NAC and ZBC please just spend a few hours on E! and learn one or two things.

This is not about expensive outlays, but just knowing how to do it which includes putting the right people in the right place at the right time!

But it was not all bad.

The red carpet was awesome as some local “wannabe” celebrities and musicians now know how to dress appropriately so maybe eventually all the complaints will hit the right spot and we will see better things at NAMA.

Congrats to the winners anyway.

Meanwhile, after Zimbabwe’s sterling performance our love for cricket is once again on the rise.

Hard luck to the boys but everyone agrees that it was a valiant struggle.

Since we are fired up for the ICC Cricket World Cup 2015 we can watch all 49 games live in HD on two dedicated 24-hour channels, SuperSport 2 and SuperSport 6 (available to DStv Premium).

You can also watch on the go with live streaming on supersport.com or using the SuperSport App.

Where is our ZBC TV? Until next time, I am out.

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