| Nogoum FM hosts its first music awards ceremony By Réhab El-Bakry |
| It might not be the only awards ceremony honoring star singers of the Arab world, but it is the first based on listeners’ votes in Egypt. Nile Radio Production (NRP), the mother company that owns Nogoum FM Radio, hosted its first awards ceremony on December 6. An estimated 70,000 votes were cast by listerners via text messages and website to pick this year’s favorites. Honoring a large number of musical superstars, the idea behind the awards, according to Hala Hegazy, managing director of Nile Radio Production, was to engage listeners by allowing them to select the singers they deemed to be most worthy of honoring.“We wanted to create an awards ceremony that was entirely based on what the listeners wanted,” Hegazy notes. “There are awards in Egypt and the region that are based around [album sales] and airplay [...], but the listener is not directly part of the process. For us, we wanted our listeners to play an active role in the selection of who they thought should be honored. That’s where the idea came from.” Along with six life achievement awards, several other categories were created for listeners to vote on, including best male and female artist, best new male and female artist, best composer, best lyricist and best video clip. The lifetime achievement awards were granted based on deliberations by a committee that included NRP team members as well as several household names from the music industry. NRP developed a system for listeners to vote by text messgaes or through a website. But for the process to actually work, NRP had to secure the approval from artists and their representatives in order to include their songs as part of the voting process. “This was our biggest challenge,” Hegazy explains. “The problem is that a lot of the time, the parameters based on which winners are selected are vague. So the idea that the winners were simply going to be awarded based on number of votes by listeners was new in the market, and there was a lot of resistance to it.” In his acceptance speech as a recipient of a lifetime achievement award, music producer Mohsen Gaber stated that it was an honor for his work to be recognized. “It’s nice to be recognized in your own country by your own public.” Hegazy explains that some of the biggest names in music opted not to be included on the voting list because they simply didn’t believe that the winners would be selected solely on listenership and not based on any other factors. But she was quick to point out that the participation of many other stars gave the awards ceremony credibility. “This means that next year, we will have more stars willing to participate. We are taking a long-term approach on this particular project. First time around is always the hardest, but as you build your reputation as a valid awards ceremony, more and more artists will participate and cherish what this award will come to represent.” |
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