Fema TV Talk Show

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Now finally some details about my VSO placement. My main objective centres around the Fema TV Talk Show. This is a weekly 30min format running for 28 weeks a year (depending on funding) and on-air since 2002. The previous season it went out 5 times a week including primetime on the 2 biggest stations, TBC1 (public broadcaster) and ITV (commercial).

The show centres about a different topic each week, not just HIV/AIDS related, but healthy lifestyles in a wider perspective incl. life skills, education, environment and so on. Most of the shows are studio based, but some discussions are being recorded in the field.

The show is a low-cost production and it’s being done with very limited resources: The editorial team consists of 3 people - the presenter couple Iddi and Rebeca and Bahati, who also has her segment on the show - viewer feedback. Production and Post are outsourced to a small team headed up by a Tanzanian who has lived for 20 years in Germany and has worked there on the ‘Hans Meiser’ chat show and some other productions. His editor (who also operates one of the cameras) has also trained and worked in Germany for a while and is with the show since the first season. So he knows the show inside out and works quite independently.

Technically it is quite basic with 2 Sony HDV cameras, 2 lights and a boom mic. The studio doubles up as our office conference room, so there is no gallery, control room, decent sound insulation, high ceiling or the likes…
Considering this, the output looks better than you might expect and it is better than most the other Tanzanian produced material. There are sometimes some weird camera angles, but graphics and sound are the weakest points.

What’s really nice is, that there is a screening of the rough cut of the show each Wednesday (or sometimes Thursday as it’s Tanzania). The whole staff congregates in the conference room, watches the following week’s show and comments on it. The production team then implements the changes before the programme gets delivered to the TV stations on Friday evening for broadcast from Saturday onwards.

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