PEPSI,ROYAL EXCHANGE JOINS NIGERIA IDOL SPONSORSHIP LIST-WINNER GETS N5 MILLION

[caption id="attachment_2140" align="alignleft" width="480" caption="Nigeria Idol hosts-Misi, Anis"][/caption]

As Nigerian Idol makes to start airing on Sunday November 21, 2010 Speculations as to whether the grand prize has been increased reached high points this week with the introduction of two additional sponsors- Pepsi and Royal Exchange

Apart from fast rising telecommunications giant Etisalat, sources say that with the introduction of Pepsi and Royal Exchange, the team at Nigerian Idol has increased the winner’s take home by 5 million Naira.

‘Yes, the grand prize has increased with the introduction of our new sponsors, but we will have to direct you to our PR team” Communication’s Manager Adaora Mbelu said when contacted last week.

A spokesperson at BlackHouse Media, publicists for the show corroborates Mbelu; even explaining further “Of course, there are new sponsors on the project and Pepsi Cola is one of them. And yes the grand prize is now 7.5M. Royal Exchange has also signed up, it just gets bigger and bigger.

No words on the figures these big spenders are committing on the project.

Fans of the Idols Franchise all over the world are familiar with the large Coca-Cola cups on American Idol Judges’ tables since 2002. The question now is if Nigerian Idol is treading that part with Pepsi Cola?

Will we be seeing Pepsi cups on the judges’ table when the show starts?

Like American Idol, Nigerian Idol aims to find the best singer in country. The former has over the year amassed a followership of 25 million, and till date is the most watched reality TV in the world. Nigerian Idol will discover that one talent who will go on to become an international superstar and music ambassador- Selling millions of records and packing concert venues across the world.

The first season of Nigerian Idol will be aired across Nigeria on several local TV stations and cable networks as well. For five consecutive months you will have the pleasure of watching Nigeria’s  biggest music talent competition on Thursdays and Sundays and have the opportunity to root and vote for your favourite Idol wannabe.

Yemisi Fajimolu will be hosting the first season of Nigerian Idol. Popularly known as Misi by her radio fans, she will be playing the role of famous Idols host Ryan Seacrest alongside Anis Holloway, a former reality show contestant

The show will air on 15 Channels including AIT, STV, NTA, CRBCTV Calabar, GTV Abeokuta, Galaxy TV, PRTV Jos and KWTV Ilorin

Others include DBSTV Asaba, ESBC Enugu, IMOTV, DITV Kaduna, HITV, TVC and Superscreen

Nigerian Idol is brought to you by Etisalat, in association with Pepsi and Royal Exchange

WHO’S DOING WHAT AT NIGERIAN IDOL 2010

Licensee-         Optima Media Group

Judges-            Audu Maikori, Jeffery Daniel and Yinka Davies

Host-               Yemisi Fajimolu(Misi), Anis Holloway

Sponsor-          Etisalat , Pepsi and Royal Exchange

Production-     Rapid Blue Format

PR-                  BlackHouse Media

THE WORLD RECEIVE THE FUTURE AWARDS TEAM IN SA,UK

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Fresh from Benin City, where it engaged with over 1000 young people in conjunction with the University of Benin-based CFI, the organisers of The Future Awards moved on for the international phase of its annual Town Hall meetings.

The South African Town Hall Meeting held at Club Hush on Friday November 5 and was organised in partnership with Storm 360, which held a reception for Storm artistes who had swept nominations and awards at the Channel O Awards. “We thought it was a fine opportunity to keep the Nigeria flag alive by participating in the activities of The Future Awards this season,” said Kenneth Oliko, Communication Coordinator for the awards.

That train quickly moved to the United Kingdom. On Wednesday, 10 November at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in East London, the official UK town hall meeting held. Youth leaders including Gbenga Sesan (two time winner of the awards), Subomi Plumptre, Oladapo Opayinka and others joined the meeting, which lasted two hours. Other guests included London-based entertainment heads Ayo Shonaiya and DJ Abass, Funmi Ajose-Adeogun amongst others.

There was a performance by a new act called Tipsy as well as comedy and a discussion about Nigeria and its issues. Discussions centred on the role that Nigerians in the Diaspora can play in changing the country. “I am not a young person,” Mrs. Ajose-Adeogun said to laughter, responding to a participant who claimed that living in Nigeria was “a waste” of his life. “But I have known this country since I came here as a student in 1976 and then after which I returned to Nigeria to work. I came back because I knew something we all need to know: there is only one place where you are truly a First Class citizen and that is Nigeria. We have a responsibility to build that country; even if for our sakes.”

The #IamNigeria campaign, with videos from 2face Idibia, Stephanie Okereke and others was also shown to the guests.

After London, it was on to Cambridge, where The Future Awards took its message to students under the Cambridge University Nigeria Society. The awards organisers, Adebola Williams and Chude Jideonwo joined awards’ nominee and award-winning journalist, Tolu Ogunlesi as he spoke with a cross section of undergraduate and graduate students on Saturday, 13 November at St Edmund’s College.

The event, called “A Taste of Nigeria” tried to “showcase Nigeria's many facets and rich culture” and ended with talks from the three guests, who spoke about the awards, this year’s campaign, how people in the Diaspora can be a part and other issues.

Jideonwo also took the opportunity to speak about the RSVP campaign of the EnoughisEnough Nigeria movement, an advocacy coalition, which he founded through The Future Project. The RSVP (Register, Scrutinize Vote, Protect) campaign is geared towards ensuring that Nigerian youths are actively involved in all the process of the 2011 election.

“The international Town Hall Meetings are aimed at re-awakening the original Nigerian consciousness in Nigerians representing Nigeria everywhere,” Williams, who is Operations Director of the award’s noted in his remarks. “This we do because The Future Awards are targeted at building a generation of Nigerians who are committed working to participate in achieving the Nigeria of our dreams and to lead that charge.”

Nominations for the awards kicked off on October 1 and have been extended to November 21. Nominees must be Nigerian citizens and must be aged 18 – 31. Nominations are on www.thefuturenigeria.com and categories include Best Use of Science, Business Owner of the Year, Professional of the Year (Corporate), Creative Artist of the Year, On-Air Personality of the Year and 15 others.

MANGO SUPER SALE!

UP to-70% starting Nov17 up until Dec5.
It's going to be a smashing MANGO sale in Lagos and Abuja. Get more Glam into your wardrobe with fantastic bargains from MANGO this season.


Abuja: Ground Floor, Store 13, Silverbird Entertainment Centre, Abuja
Lagos: 18, The Palms Shopping Mall, Lekki, Lagos, Lagos
Contact: Mango Lagos – 08099995599 | Mango Abuja – 08099994499

LINKS TO LATEST LIFESTYLE NEWS

All the links to excite you more are here courtesy of www.gistmaster.com 
 DSTV is going 'tough' with competitors.Quite unbelivable, they have crashed the price to the extent that soon 'aboki' selling sweet and biscuit around the corner of your street will be able to have one.lol...meanwhile right beside you is the picture of the beautiful MD of MNET Africa.
 read the story here DSTV GOES 'HARD' ON COMPETITORS

You can also read about the mother of all 40th birthday parties coming up in Lagos.Princess Cynthia Andrew the top Lagos female socialites and her friends are already painting Lagos red.See the details of the November 21 2010 event here. click HIGH SOCIETY WOMAN, CYNTHIA ANDREW CELEBRATES 40TH IN LAGOS

Read the story of how Spice intends to become Africa's number one lifestyle channel. At a recent press conference in Lagos, the company and their consultant, Mai Atafo reveal their plans Click SPICE TV PLANS BIG FOR 2011
Now, the Big Brother Africa all stars is over and all eyes will now shift to Nigeria in West Africa as the great search begins for the Next Movie Star. Click the link to read the interesting details of the top TV reality show.

NIGERIA:DSTV GOES 'HARD' ON COMPETITORS

[caption id="attachment_2120" align="alignleft" width="362" caption="BIOLA ALABI MD MNET AFRICA"][/caption]

By Niyi Tabiti

By the time you are reading this piece, loads of trailers will still be off loading its content of DSTV dish and decoders in various locations in Nigeria. Why? There is already a mad rush for it.

You can now get a DSTV for N9000. This was something that the least package was sold for about N25,000 some weeks back.

Gistmaster.com correspondent sighted trailers loaded with the dish at Ikeja some days back. "the sudden reduction coupled with other things shows that the company is ready to knock out its competitors off the market" said Garuba Ajilo, a businessman.

The only visible competitor was HITV and since they lost the broadcast rights for European Premiership on its cable channel, it was a big blow that would take sometime to recover. Nigezie, a youth based music channel also left.Though they decided to add up others, it has not been the same again for HITV .

Now with all the peps of showing is several TV channels (especially African magic which is now in different tribal languages), they have been able to come low. Even competitors won't believe that DSTV can now come so low.At the moment, even an 'Okada' rider or roadside mechanic can afford to buy one. A furniture maker who just his own DSTV at the new price of N9000 said that it is unbelievable that he can now use DSTV which use to be categorized a luxury item only meant for the rich.

now, young enterprise, especially football showing centres can now afford to erect to boost their business. Sulaiman Adekoya, a local musician explained to gistmaster.com in Yoruba that it good that the prices of pay TV has crashed in Nigeria. We must thank HITV that  took up the challenge in the first place. They were the ones that brought the price down in the first place being a Nigerian company. They also ensure that enough people get employment by constructing their own viewing centres and charging a stipulated fee so that people can come and watch premiership league.

Before now, only the rich has the opportunity of watching these games in the comfort of their homes.

The price crash seems to be the right period for DSTV. A Nigerian, Uti Nwanchukwu is still the man of the moment as he was recently declared winner of the Big Brother Africa all stars edition packaged by MNET

For those who are keen observers of pay TV in Nigeria,  DSTV has not done badly for a number of reasons. Since Multichoice, a south African company launched it operations  in Nigeria some years ago, it has engaged in many exciting things, though some still think it has not done enough.

ALL EYES ON AFRICA AS NEXT MOVIE STAR SEARCH BEGINS

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On Wednesday, November 10, sixteen youths, drawn from across ten African countries, entered the Next Movie Star House in search of fame, pride and glory. They came well prepared. For the past two weeks, the housemates had been going through several training and grooming sessions by accomplished professionals as part of the organizers’ commitment to engendering an informative, entertaining and educative show. The executive producer of the show, Sola Fajobi says, “This year’s show is going to be especially very interesting because we have housemates from ten African countries who are all very talented in their own rights. The housemates are also conscious of the fact that they need to dig into the depth of their talents to convince viewers who would determine the ultimate winner that they deserve the NMS crown knowing full well that winners and contestants of NMS have gone on to achieve continental glory.”

This is the sixth edition of the NMS which birthed in 2005 to serve as a springboard for unheralded talents to enter the Nigerian movie industry in grand style. Over the years, the show has produced countless movie stars including Portia Yamahan, Tonto Dike, Annie Macaulay, Moyo Lawal, Eyo (who was on the last Project Fame West Africa), and Lydia Forson, the Ghanaian contestant in 2007 that went on to become a joint winner of the best actress award at the 2009 Africa Movie Academy Awards. Kevin Chuwang Pam who won the 2009 Big Brother Africa was a first runner up in the NMS in 2006 while Uti Nwachukwu, winner of the just concluded Big Brother Africa All Stars, was first runner up in the NMS 2007 edition. The 2010 NMS would be broadcast on NTA network every day until December 10.

EXHIBITORS ON PARADE - PART 3

WOW , we are on our third listing and there is still more to come .
Well today we have quite an interesting bunch. Just browse thru and see for yourself.

AFRICAN@LONDON – Its all about fabric – print, plain, voile, guinea. If you think you have seen it all, take a peek at what they have got, and you know there is so much more you have not seen.

MUD- Make Up -Make-Up Designory (MUD) is an international make-up company that recently launched in Nigeria, and has been creating genuine make-up products and providing quality education for over the past decade. In the international community, MUD has been the expert choice of make-up professionals, as its renowned make-up schools have produced renowned make-up artists on a global scale.
With a huge focus on true quality make-up, MUD promises long lasting wearability, flawless application, and radiantly accurate color.
All cosmetics products ranging from foundations, powders and bronzers to eye shadows, lip sticks, and brushes

MARIAM ILAKA -A simple debut collection done with bits and pieces of fabrics and trimmings in my archives. This collection is not based on a particular theme but a color world consisting mainly of black and white as an introduction of Mariam Ilaka.....a fashion company whose brand colors are black and white. In design direction this collection is very commercial...a cautious test of the Nigerian fashion market. It consists mainly of chic and classic easy to wear dresses with embroidery, beads and tulle details. The silhouette and stylelines are simple with injections of exaggeated shoulders,voluminous skirts and fluid dresses.

Republic Of Foreigner - REPUBLIC OF FOREIGNER (ROF) is a women’s apparel brand established with the aim of bringing out the spirit of freedom in all the ladies out there! Inspired by vintage dresses, fairies & pixies, beat poets, endless summers of love, and film, the creators developed a brand based on fun, love, and freedom! "We're like hippies just spreading the love…!"

ROF offers a wide selection of desirables--modern & vintage inspired clothing and accessories derived from the global fashion sphere.

All of the brand's fabrics are handpicked with care for style, wearability, and quality

Xclamations! by tomi rotimi
This line has been well known over time for their creative collections of linen designs, but this season, they are testing the waters with a jersey collection tagged - SUPERLATIVES -Xclamations is an African fashion label based in Nigeria. Our designs -are original classic pieces that are are always in style.

FLAWLESS STYLE Introducing to Nigeria, Flawless Style!

Flawless Style is a luxury lifestyle brand, which comprises of Flawless Hair, Flawless Skincare and Flawless Cosmetics.

Flawless Hair offers the best quality, luxurious 100% virgin Remy hair, hand selected from only the best sources around the world. Flawless hair comes in a variety of textures and styles. Choose from extensions for weaves, braid hair, Full Lace Wigs, Frontals, Closures and Lace Front Wigs. Flawless Hair also stocks the best in hair care products.
We cater to the needs of every individual client. Flawless Hair is the authorised distributor of Indique hair in Nigeria.
Flawless cosmetics and skincare is the authorised distributor for Becca cosmetics in Nigeria, an exclusive range of make up and skincare products for the woman who wants nothing but the best! Becca contains carefully selected, skin-loving ingredients designed to protect and nourish your skin while you look your best. Flawless Style… Your one-stop shop for your Luxurious beauty requirements!-