Teju Babyface Grants 1st 2016 Interview, Plans To Bring Sanusi Back To Lagos

See excerpts from TV show host Teju Babyface recent chat with The Entertainer
Teju Babyface Grants 1st 2016 Interview, Plans To Bring Sanusi Back To Lagos

We’ve heard different stories but why did you stop Teju Babyface TV Show?

I didn’t stop my show. I don’t know what gave you that impression because as I speak to you our show is on air in quite a number of television stations. I know what you mean is that we haven’t recorded new contents for a while now.

That is true and the answer is that one must always restrategise because it is a challenging business environment for entrepreneurs. Since you are standing by yourself without a structured financial support you must learn on the job. When you learn you would have to relax and put the lessons into practice.

I want people to watch the next 12 months and see what happens. I have read a few articles where they said I explained why I stopped the TV show and I got curious where they got that impression from because we never stopped.

But something must have fueled the impression that you stopped the show?

I used to make a lot of noise about it; you would see billboards everywhere and it is always on social media too. We were on leading television stations. But we didn’t do all that for a while; we decided to reduce it.

When a captain of a ship runs into a storm on the high sea he brings down the sail. The fact that he cannot see the sail of the ship from miles away during the storm doesn’t mean the ship is not on the sea.

Does this mean you actually ran into trouble?

Every business runs into trouble. Anyone who asks such questions is rather infantile or not a business person. Every single business runs into trouble including some of the most successful ones that you know.

As my mentor Leke Adler would say no business goes like a rocket. In business there are highs and lows. The trick is to manage to hang on during the low period so as to come out higher.

What were the challenges precisely?

There are myriad challenges. You pay for airtime in this country but in other parts of the world networks fund the programmes. They pay for all the expenses; all what you need to do is to execute it with your creative idea and give it to them. The other option is to fund the project and they buy it.

In Nigeria you produce the programme yourself, you pay the TV stations to air it and you market it yourself. You would soon run into problems unless you have a deep pocket or your father left you with so much money before he died. For example, if you borrowed money to record the first 13 episodes of a show, the television station would still demand you pay for all the episodes.

They also have a ridiculous thing called displacement surcharge. If the cost of airtime for 13 episodes is N5.2 million, you would have to pay that in two places. You would pay N10.4 million in addition to the millions you have spent recording the show. When you meet with agencies for marketing they would tell you it is new.

You must have ran the show for some time to attract the right sponsors. To do a show at the level we are doing it you need your own studio, you need a facility that is yours. We don’t have that; we have to record in bulk. We get a studio and try to record for some weeks. That is not the way it should work.

But your show shouldn’t find it difficult attracting sponsors…

That is what you see. Who paid for the millions that took us there? If one manages to break even there is need to start planning so that you don’t stop along the way.

Now that we have arrested the attention of a certain part of the market we want to leverage on that for the next one decade or so. The problem with most independent producers is that they don’t take out time to restrategise.

You are in a market where African magic exists and they have deep pocket, so you need to strategise to remain relevant. You will only run out of air at some point if you fail to restrategise. We didn’t go off; we just stopped recording new episodes.

Why did you quit standup comedy for TV?

You must always look for where life has called you to. Standup comedy for me was a means to an end, not an end in itself. It was a skill I needed to learn to get to where I was headed to in life.

While I am a good standup comedian by most reckoning there are people who do it far better than me and they are career standup comedians.

It was just something I did for a while to have certain experiences and having gotten those experiences I figured it was time to move on to television. Television is an area where I am king; I produce my content for television very well and I am almost flawless in that area.

But does standup comedy stop you from TV?

What it takes to do television at the level we did it didn’t give any space. Television is a jealous endeavour; you would find out that the resources it takes or demands from you are more than you have to give.

So there is no space for you to contemplate comedy shows especially when one is trying to build a certain legacy. I am not looking to make money so fast, though money is important but I always like to do new and different things. I did a few comedy shows in the past and they were successful.

Do you regret living standup comedy?

The remarkable thing is that I never left standup comedy, though you won’t see me performing comedy on stage. A comedian must form jokes. The time other people spend putting jokes together I spend in writing scripts for television.

Before I was using all that creativity to form jokes, but I now use it for TV and to write business models for my organisation. As far as standup comedy goes I really don’t have that much to give again as I used to.

But I am still a comedian; I can’t run away from that. It is what I am known for and it would always be part of me no matter how big I become or where I move into.

You made several attempts to bring Wole Soyinka to your show, but you were never successful with that. How did you feel?

I am still working on that. His script was actually the first I wrote in 2008. The first two scripts I wrote I haven’t had the opportunity to interview them. The second person is Lamido Sanusi, former governor of Central bank of Nigeria and Sultan of Sokoto. I didn’t make any attempt to get to Lamido.

When I started the show I knew subconsciously that there might come a time we would take a break like the one you’ve seen. It gives us enough time to bring up greater things. Coming back, we would need the likes of Wole Soyinka and Lamido. I didn’t really stress myself to get them because I knew the period was coming when we would have what it took to really have them on our programme.

Don’t you think the break could affect the followership?

What has come in place since we took a break? You need to tell me a talk show that is as good as ours or even better. When you do your work well you have no worries and it is one of the things I tell young people. When you come out in the area that life called you and you do your work well, nobody can take your place while you are away.

When you come back the fans you left behind would still embrace you. I watched our show doing very well, I watched it getting to a point where we faced some problems and we had to stop to solve these problems.

Solving these problems took a while but we needed to solve them. We’ve fixed the problems, so opportunities are coming again. It is now time to implement the solutions we got.

Are you saying no other TV show can rival yours?

Every product and service has its own niche. The niche we’ve created is still there; nobody has taken our place and followership. We have our own unique signature; that doesn’t mean we don’t have other TV shows that are good or better. We are good at what we do.

What have you lost to the show?

I lost nothing as such. I don’t sleep well; my mind refuses to go to sleep very often. That is basically what I lost, but I gained so many things as well including popularity, some remuneration, fulfillment among others.

Why have you been avoiding the media?

There is a time for everything; one shouldn’t talk all the time. There is a time a young business person must go away to restrategise. During that period you don’t need to be seen everywhere and you have no need to speak with the media. It is not because you don’t respect them; it is because you are hibernating.

When your time of show comes, you’ve done all that is needed to be done, you can begin to speak with the media and tell the world your plans. The period you saw me was my hibernation period.

People often fear going away especially in showbiz; they say if you are silent for too long people will forget about you. I wasn’t shunning the media; I just didn’t have anything to say.

You started as an actor and you featured in some films such as Diamond Ring in 1999; Do you miss those days?

They were not calling me for roles. I looked for the roles and I didn’t get them. I enjoyed acting at that time, but I don’t like to go back there anymore. It is something I can do, but it is not the best expression of my gift or talent.

There are other people who can do it far better than I can. I spent about five years in the movie industry. I think I became pretty popular after Diamond Ring because most people have seen the movie.

Are there things you could have done differently?

That is business, money management. The fault with a lot of creative people is that they sacrifice everything for their dreams, including financially education. They are not very financial savvy so when they begin to make moment they don’t understand how to manage it.

They keep feeding t h e dream, but unfortunately for perfectionists and creative people the dream is never satisfied and it would eventually strip you of everything you have.

When they make money instead of spreading it out and using financial sense, they would love to bring heaven to earth. I did that with Teju Babyface Show.

When I started to make money I wanted everything to be done at once; I wanted bigger studio, I wanted better light and so on. You have to grow steadily in business, so I would to do certain things differently with regard to spacing myself. But we learn from life everyday so as to adjust.

Has here been anytime your youthful look worked against you?

I was driving to Jibowu, Yaba, Lagos, to connect to the WAEC office one day and a woman who was also driving insulted me. She wasn’t driving well and I saw that she was a learner. Instead of apologing she called me stupid boy and said I should go and drop my father’s car.

This was 2003, I bought my first car a Honda product in 2002. I wanted to chase her, but she turned into another street. I can never forget her, she wrapped her hair as if she was coming from church.

Even after marriage do you still have female admirers?

I don’t think I have a choice in serving God; few people will understand this if they read it. We have certain people who God has just chosen for his work. For that reason I get the impression that God often shield me from the eyes of ladies. But I am not complaining; it is a good place to be. It is either they don’t see me or they are afraid of me. They greet me timidly or not sure of how to greet me. My friend once told me that it is the way I carry myself, but unfortunately I don’t see these things. And in these days of social media I am always putting the picture of my wife everywhere. My marriage is now three years and four months.

When should we expect your show?

By third quarter of this year; we would be recording first week of April. I have leant many lessons and one is that life is a marathon. My show would still be on air in another 10 years. If I am after a particular guest and I can’t get him, I would leave him because it means to me that it is not yet time.

I didn’t extend myself to get some of the biggest guests that I have had on the show. King Sunny Ade drove himself to Victoria Island despite informing him three days before the show.

K1 the Ultimate drove himself all the way from Isolo, Lagos, on a day there was terrible traffic to Victoria Island. So your blessing or miracle shall not pass you by.
[The Entertainer]