Words: Danson John

Richard Rodgers Onyango a.k.a Richie Roja is the next big host. He emerged top from a list of 53 contestants angling for a stint as “The Next Big Host” of a yet to be revealed Spielworks media production. Roja does not hail from the city as first impression would suggest but from out to the west of Kenya in the rural Siaya County.
“I was a typical shao {rural} boy in the big city but well educated though” laughs Rodger.
His eloquence and speech shine through. His unhesitant and witty response to questions reveals a confident personality who talks from deep insight.
For his O-level he attended Ngere High School. He then advanced to study law at the Kenya School of Professional Studies which he dropped out saying it was not interesting. He then went to study Mass Communications graduating with a diploma in August 2012 at the Multi Media University.
The journey

Roja was part of the Out of Africa the Magic of Kenya musical. It was an initiative of Kenya Tourism Board with an aim of marketing Kenya. The group toured Europe for a duration of three and a half months. His performances included singing and dancing. Coming back from the musical tour, he got a job at Youth TV a digital station at Star times. Unfortunately it only lasted two months and Rodger was back on the streets.
After this setback, Roja recalls getting a link on Whatspp from a friend named Muigai. He checked it out but did not pay much heed to it. However another known as Wakesho insisted he try his hand. She coerced him to try it out and went a step further to shoot the mobile video at her apartment.
“Since am not a celebrity I had to do a lot of canvassing for the video to go live. I was against known personalities like Miss Mandi of 91.5 Hits Fm, Anita Nderu from Teen Republic and a couple of other people who have networks in the arts and entertainment industry”.

Without rehearsing, he just had a one letting fate takes its course. Nonetheless, he kept pestering his almost a thousand friends on Facebook to go like and share the link, admits he become quite the nuisance.
“People were like, if you going to tell me that thing again, I will kill you!”
The support and likes got him into the top ten and that’s where things started to look up. A staunch believer in not comparing himself to others he decided not to view any other contestant’s video unless he made it to the top ten.
Growing up, he had a dream of hosting a show “I remember my sister watching me sit on my bed pretending to host this big talk show like am Oprah, Pierce Morgan Anderson Cooper or someone else with an audience of 300 people.

The auditions weren’t easy. His fellow contestants kept his sweat glands active. Regardless, he believes everyone did his best and at the end one winner had to emerge. “If I wasn’t the chosen one, I wouldn’t be a sore loser” he says. The suspense leading up to the announcement filled him with angst.

The Big Reveal
The good news was broken to him via whatsapp. He does not even remember who sent the message but all he knows is that he won. “My friends and I had gone out to watch the Manchester versus Chelsea match. I was just sitting on my twitter timeline watching my battery fade. Each time they kept teasing: and the winner is? then I saw this retweet by Spielworks that had a link. The link on You Tube was, the next big host is Richi Roja . My phone dropped, the battery split and my friends were astonished. I was short of words but picked the phone, put the battery back. When I showed them, they all started screaming at the highest pitch of their voices. People actually thought we were screaming for the match but it was because of the good news. A lot of emotions engulfed us, all my friends were crying but they know I really worked hard for this” says an elated Rodger.

The dancing skirt
Roja is a singer who likes world music and something he can dance to. He has been dancing since he was a kid. The most embarrassing moment of his life was when a dancing sisal skirt fell off on stage. The incident happened in Eindhoven, Netherlands when he was performing in front of 1500 people in a theatre.

As the next big host, he looks up to likes of Ellen DeGeneres, Anderson Cooper and Kabelo of Channel O Africa. Roja says the guy is so crazy and he would be Kabelo if he had dreadlocks. He resonates with their fun personalities and the philosophy of not taking life that seriously.
Of the numerous Kenyan hosts, Julie Gichuru stands out for Roja. She has made world leaders grace her talk shows.

Roja’s holds strong sentiments on the state of the entertainment industry in Africa. “Kenyan talk shows are boring. The consumers cannot relate to the content”. He makes the compelling argument that if Kenya had a strong presence in the continental scene they would be hanging with South Africa and Nigeria in the same pool.
Roja would like star in a talk show that is trendy fun, relatable and engaging. His pet peeve is the stuffy approach that commonly features in talk shows formats in Africa.

“We in Africa just need to get out of the serious zone and have some fun”.

As a soldier preparing for battle so is the next big host brimming with anticipation. There is much work to be done as the show enters the conceptual phase. All he wants to do is showcase his fresh skills in the talk show circuit. The special guest he wishes to bring to his show one day is his mum to celebrate her contribution to his development thus far. He personally thanked the producer Dorothy Ghetubba and the Spielworks family turning his dream into reality”.
“I always believed someday I would get an opportunity to share with the world my experiences. I believe you can achieve what you perceive. I believed and here I am,”

That’s Roja experience for you “The Next Big Host” coming to a screen near you…soon enough.

On 19st August 2013, we had the privilege of having the NTV crew visit our Sumu La Penzi set. They interacted with our crew and some of the actors present and recorded behind the scenes clips for the show.
The following day, on 20th August 2013, Avril Nyambura aka “Avril” who plays Eva and Davidson Ngibuini better known as “DNG” who plays Tash alongside the director of the show, Caroline Odongo were interviewed on AM Live by Sheila Mwanyigha.

They shared their journey through the entertainment industry and also spoke a little about the show. Follow the link below to catch a glimpse of what they had to say

Meet women in business who work hard and smart turning small businesses into great enterprises
Simple Alliance, Kenya Limited

Women in business is a growing concept in Kenya and when it happens that the woman in question is a young woman under 40, a lot of hard work must have been put in to achieve success. Meet Dorothy Gituba who runs the greatest of production companies and attributes this to her expertise in raising funds and the realisation that in addition to investing in ideas we need to invest in people. “I learnt from the get go that companies invest in people not only ideas and so I learnt how to convince people by just being myself” she told Edward Kwach and Angela Angwenyi on Easy FM and hers is a story of passion and a dream for great opportunities.

Dorothy speaks of her journey from a project manager to a CEO and all that was involved including the daunting task that faces every entrepreneur when starting a business, the financing ghost. This is when she best put her fund sourcing skills into practice and this she has complemented with the following to see the success of Spielworks Media:

The pull and push into entrepreneurship
Starting a business is pegged on different levels for different people and as it is there are those who possess the requisite skills and drive to become entrepreneurs, Dorothy admits she always knew she was uncomfortable working for someone else, she always wanted to be her own boss, she was restless while a salaried person and hence her drive to start her own business. The restlessness pushed her and the pull from the urge for self-employment complemented.

When opportunity and preparation meet
Dorothy defines luck as the point at which opportunity and well preparedness meet and advices that an entrepreneur should always work on being the best with the available resources. Passion is a great aspect of each small business owner and Dorothy loves what she does and appreciates that which her competitors in the market are doing.

Dream big, dream wise
Like any other entrepreneur, Dorothy too dreams; she dreams big and would like to introduce new concepts into the Kenya production industry, the purple cow that will set her apart from every other producer in Kenya. She would like to introduce period pieces. Having said this Dorothy reiterates that she does not dream blindly and would like to consider market trends before venturing into any aspect of TV production. She is keen on financial rationale and would not just jump into any sea before evaluating it and finding out how much it can bring to the table. An appreciation of the power of partnerships and advantages it has on businesses has led Dorothy to this path of success.

Target market
Understanding the market is one aspect that sees the success of business and therefore entrepreneurs should always doctor their products and services to cater for the needs of those in their local markets and not like any other person does it elsewhere. Dorothy tells stories that relate to Kenya and this has contributed a lot to the success of her productions.

Entrepreneurs should learn to create their own opportunities and not just wait to shine under any other persons light. Dreaming one’s own dream is what counts as opposed to helping someone else build their own dreams.

Dorothy’s word for potential entrepreneurs is one meant to prepare them; it always is hard work before you would start eating the fruit and says you have to work smart and work hard. Businesses will only thrive when they are well thought out and effort is put in to see them develop through the journey to success. “It’s very difficult, so you must be tenacious, and you must have a discipline, and you must have such a thick skin…….so you must be prepared to work and must have a long term vision….”

By Mwikali Lati
Posted Thursday, August 1 2013 at 16:57

As the Kenyan film industry grows, it calls for specialisation and no one knows this first hand than Ndanu Kilonzo, the head of production at Speilworks.

“When I first met Dorothy [the founder of Speilworks] in 2009, we were just the two of us. We would come up with the stories, write the scripts, do the editing — I mean we did a lot. Now, we have 60 people doing what we used to do,” she says.

Between the two of them, they were able to produce the Katiba series, Lies that Bind and Block D — the last two still in production.

With the company’s ambitious plans to have eight new programmes this year Ms Kilonzo’s role as the head of production and for each show, the line producer, has clearly been defined.

“Line producer is the business aspect of film making. If I was not doing this I would be an accountant somewhere. Being a line producer means dealing with budgets, contracts — it’s everything, behind the scenes,” she says.

When pitching a show, the film making company is usually told the budget available or how much broadcasters will pay per episode. Ms Kilonzo’s job is to make sure that all the items, including pay for actors, fits within the set budget.

She explains that a line producer’s job is close to that of a production manager, who deals with the day-to-day running of a show and is always present at the set.

Demanding work

“A production is more demanding when it’s starting. I usually don’t start two productions at the same time,” she says, adding that the first month of any production is critical as is the last month when one does not want to go over the budget.

“If we are rolling camera, I like to roll more than two productions at the same time. We have to keep track, so in the first and last month I’m literally at the set every day,” she says.

As soon as she is done, she hands the show over to the production manager. This frees her time to start pre-production of new shows. However as the line manager, she still has to check on the progress of each show daily.

Ms Kilonzo credits her love for the creative and performing arts to books.

“I have always been an avid reader and I would always form pictures in my head from the books I was reading,” says she.

After high school, Ms Kilonzo wanted to study Media and started shopping for a college. But when she was invited to Maseno University, she decided to instead study Creative Arts and Performance.

“In my class, we were only four,” she says.

Ms Kilonzo jokes that even up to today her parents do not fully understand what she does, but they have continued to support her.

“They gave me the freedom, which in turn gave me the confidence to venture into the arts. That to me has always been special. To this day, they still give me the push to be more,” she says.

As a student, she learnt scripting, production, directing as well as acting. Her first job was as a production assistant; she knew early enough that her strength lay in working behind the scenes.

“The first day of shooting was confusing for me. You learn these things in school and then do some student projects but unless you are on a real set, nothing quite prepares you for the real thing,” she says.

She was part of a crew that was shooting a commercial. She was shocked and fascinated at the huge cranes, the cameras, wardrobe, make-up and all the people involved in something that goes on air more often than not for less than minute yet it was shot for two days, from 6am to 1am.

“There is a lot of media training and very little film training. We find that we have to train people on the field. They do not have basic filmmaking components like scripts, directing, lighting or post production,” she says.

Ms Kilonzo hopes to change how the creative industry is run at the top. At present, she is an MBA student at Strathmore University looking to get business knowledge to apply in the industry.

“It’s hard for people to understand that at the end of the day, it [film production] is a business which needs management,” she says.

mwikalilati@gmail.com

The TOP 5 just arrived and to receive them was Spielworks Media CEO Dorothy Ghettuba. Lets see how they perform tonight, did i mention they are gonna face 3 Judges.

HIGHER LEARNING- Now showing on SABC, Africa Magic Entertainment
This is a drama series telling a coming of age story. It is set in cosmopolitan Kilimanjaro University and revolves around the harsh realities of identity, life and survival in campus.