In the month that celebrates International Women’s Day, Trace Sports Stars have selected Pabi Moloi as the face of its Girl Power theme. The TV and radio personality has already accomplished much in her short life so she is the perfect fit for programming that seeks to inspire women.
“We have a monthly theme and select celebrities whom we feel know something about the subject,” said Valentine Gaudin, the general manager for Trace South Africa.
“They then come in and get to host the show for a month. Pabi is presenting the Girl Power theme for March and next month we will have Roxy Burger in the Peace theme. In May we will have Da L.E.S in a Countdown theme on who is best at what. We have it all planned out until the end of the year.”
The themed shows air every Friday at 9pm and have been running for a few months, with established local celebrities like Kuli Roberts and Poppy Ntshongwana bringing their own style to the channel.
“We try and look for activities which we know our guest celebrity presenter can relate to,” said Gaudin. “For instance, we want to dedicate a month to fights later in the year and are thinking of having AKA as our guest presenter. If you have seen his Instagram account of late, you will know that he has been into boxing. I think he is being sponsored by some gym in Sandton. Kuli Roberts also did well with the Scandal theme and we think Pabi is the perfect candidate for the Girl Power theme because she is always elevating herself. She is studying and works on various platforms so she is an inspiration to many women,” she explained.
Viewers can also expect some international flavour, but fused with local topics to keep things relevent for the South African audience.
“In August, we will do something with the NBA who will be here for an exhibition game. The theme is Jump so it will encompass all sports that incorporate jumping, including basketball. Fashion Week in Paris comes right after that, so we will we do a Style season. In October we are doing Gossip, in November we do Extreme and to wrap up the year, we do Best vs Worst,” explained Gaudin.
While we love seeing our celebirities do the things they love outside of their professions, Gaudin confessed that it wasn’t easy to secure all the people Trace Sports Stars wanted for the given episodes.
“The one problem we have is sometimes we can’t access certain celebrities because of their contractual obligations. A lot of people have exclusivity deals with the SABC and it’s difficult to get them. We also think it is time we start looking for up-and-coming people who want to be on TV,” she said.
And for those who make it, they need to have some sort of idea as to how the TV camera works so that the shoots are as seamless as possible.
“We make it easy for all the presenters to be part of the show. We obviously expect them to have some background in being in front of a camera. Artists are generally used to being in front of a camera and the links are fairly small so we try to make it as painless as possible. We shoot this in one day only so the less mistakes a guest presenter makes, the quicker we wrap up,” she said.
• Get insights on your favourite celebrity on Trace Sports Stars, Fridays, 9pm.