Abraham Kofi Davies aka Salinko has rubbished claims that showing of telenovelas on local television channels has led to the decline in patronage of the local movie industry.

According to him the real issues that have contributed to the decline in popularity of local movie industry include lack of innovation, backbiting in the industry, neglect of veteran actors among others.

Contributing to the debate on the declining fortunes of ‘made in Ghana’ movies on UTV’s McBrown’s Kitchen, he rejected claims that countless telenovelas showing on different TV stations have caused the crisis in the industry.

“Telenovela’s can never collapse the local movie industry. The fundamental issue here is that, times are changing, and the industry must change to catch up. Directors must begin to explore more creative ways of presenting their works to the public. With regard to distribution, movies used to be sold on cassettes, before CDs and DVD’s were introduced, now the fun is all happening on the internet. That is where we must be heading to after fine-tuning our movies,” he explained.

Salinko also added that one key reason why the industry has taken a nosedive is because of backbiting in the industry.

“We need a united industry, if we want to go far. The trend of turning down an offer to star in a movie because person A or person B is on board is killing the industry. Let’s unite and reinvent ourselves and we can bounce back,” he said.