At long last, we have watched Charterhouse’s Stars of The Future and TV3’s Mentor 3 come to a successful end with the winners, Justice and Erico respectively walking away with big smiles on their faces.

It is very significant to note how both winners are males and also very staunch Christians, I should say, considering their various backgrounds in music prior to their participation in these reality shows.

Anyway, I bid them congratulations and I know the good Lord who has started this work in them will finish it in good time, Amen. These two reality shows brightened our screens for a few months and we have all being overwhelmed by the emotional uproars which have characterized them from day one to end. I mean, the tears, anger, disappointments, joy, sorrow, tension and the greatest of all which is suspense.

We have watched our favorites being kicked out or evicted from the Shows and we have also watched how people we never thought could even make it near the finals have rather given off their best to get there. It was all interesting and we hope to watch more of them in a much improved way.

For Stars of The Future, this was their second edition but TV3 has had theirs three times within less than two years but needless to say, the production aspect of both shows could visibly be seen as remotely different from each other.

We have been quick to chastise some of them for certain lapses but the fact is that the two shows have their unique styles and their policies or should I say means of achieving that common concept were totally different.

Mentor obviously had an ambition of producing talented musicians to take over the mantle from our old local artistes while still maintaining the element of surprise and suspense to keep their audience interested in the show.

Stars had the objective of producing musicians who would fit the international stage within the shortest possible time while maintaining the level of professionalism in their own domain and cut out for a specific kind of audience, no wonder they sang more foreign songs than local ones.

With the above explanations, I wouldn’t say it is fair to compare the two shows in every sense of the word.

However, there were certain aspects of the show which are worth comparing. For instance, the voting system: all the shows gave the public the right to vote to either maintain or evict deserving contestants via SMS text and these were collated together with those of the judges to award the housemates.

By observation, I would say that the one I found to be more transparent and professional was that of Stars of The Future.

In Mentor, everything as collating of the voting results was done by an in-house committee and was presented on the day of the housemates’ performance which was on a Sunday while in Stars; the collation was done in collaboration with the Department of National Lotteries (DNL).

Also, the results were not announced right there on the day of performance. Meaning, they take their time to do it well and present them on a different day.

Bringing in an external partner like DNL was to ensure that there was no partiality and that the collation would be better done by real professionals, I did like that one.

The fear of having only an in-house group collate the voting results lied in the fact that they may be tempted to adopt some form of discrimination and also it never gives the public the chance to see what is happening off the scene.

I am not saying this happened but I know it has crossed the minds of many members of the public. Another thing I found quite interesting was certain circumstances which left the public wondering what was really happening, I would say here that the organizers of the show ought to beat themselves up for not communicating well with their fans or the general public.

In Mentor, Bright was taken off the show because, according to reports, his family members thought it wise to let him further his education outside the country at that crucial moment.

The organizers did not fill us with the details of that information and behaved like they were indifferent.

What about his fans? They never thought of that, I guess. In Mentor again, a contestant is evicted and then brought back into the show via the same public voting which I found very odd. This kind of system should have been communicated to the public even before the show started.

We should have been earlier informed when and how one or two evicted housemates would be given the chance to come back into the show but this was never done and it came all of a sudden with the explanation that it formed part of the surprise.

That, to me, was crap and made me believe that that contestant was brought back because they just wanted him or her to still be part of the show and perhaps win; it happened to Prince of Mentor 2 and Erico of Mentor 3, na lie?

That is total partiality. My opinion, if a contestant is evicted, he or she should stay evicted for good to let the show go on. The whole thing looked so unplanned and childish.

Anyway, Stars of The Future could have done better by housing the contestants. Just imagine the inconveniences involved when some of them had to travel back and forth from remote regions just to take part in the show every week or so.

Some faced accommodation problems in Accra since they had come from other regions. The organisers could have at least provided some form of accommodation for them.

Also, we have been complaining about some judges being too harsh on contestants but in Stars, I would say that some of the judges were too soft for my liking.

A little “harshness” from them would have put the contestants on their toes, it really does.

Some of them were too diplomatic with the truth….I mean the truth about the contestants’ performances.

Would somebody please explain why they did not show the eviction show of Twum Barima that got his mother so upset that she never wanted her son to participate in the final show? I would say, communication at that point in time was very poor and the organisers could have done better.

I would have loved to go on with this but there are other issues which need to be addressed.

I would say I did enjoy the reality shows and wish they would never end. But then, if there are bound to be more of those in the future, I would like to see more professionalism and ample communication between organisers and the public who are so crazy about the shows.

Explaining things in details to the public puts their minds at rest and makes them appreciate the show more.

Kudos to Mentor and Stars of The Future…Hey, What happened to the comedy segment of the competition, Charterhouse, please explain.