YAMAS POSTPONED INDEFINITELY
The youthful radio station, Yarona FM, has announced an indefinite postponement of their highly rated annual music awards dubbed Yarona FM Music Awards (YAMAS).
Voice Entertainment can, however, exclusively reveal that it is not just the deadly novel coronavirus outbreak that has led to the postponement of the glamorous awards. The 6th YAMAS were doomed from the start, it seems.
Information from a highly-placed source has indicated that the radio station board was not in support of the loss-making awards.
“You may have realised that the announcement of the dates was made pretty late than usual this year because there was a lot of running back and forth behind closed doors,” said a source.
The source further said, “There is a lot of sabotage that is going on behind closed doors. There are people within the board and management who did not want the event to happen. Others are not happy with the ongoing retrenchment exercise at Yarona FM and that is why they wanted to sabotage this particular event and damage the brand’s name.”
Meanwhile Yarona FM’S founding Director, Percy Raditladi, has confirmed that there was infighting within the board concerning the awards at the beginning.
“The debate was there around the awards before the launch but we managed to sort out our challenges and secure sponsors. As you know, however, with the ongoing global concern of the COVID-19, we have decided to put the ceremony on halt for now.”
However, over the years the Yarona FM awards have proved to be unprofitable, milking the “Live the Music” station millions of pula in the process.
“Last year alone, they lost P1.5 million, in addition to the P1 million loss of previous years,” Raditladi has revealed.
Commenting on allegations that they owe their host from last year as well as other service providers, Raditladi said, “That is not true. We decided to change venue because the previous hosts had quadrupled their charge from P200 000.00 to now P800 000.00. But of course we needed a bigger venue. All the other service providers have been paid directly by our sponsors. Even this year, most of the service providers have already been paid either fully or partly,” Raditladi stated
Voice Entertainment has been reliably informed that the YAMAS have been postponed to a date after winter.
The event’s budget is currently pegged at P3 million but it is likely to go up after the sudden postponement.
‘Even without Coronavirus, the awards were doomed,’ source ‘We made a loss of P1.5million last year,’ Raditladi