Dr. A. Uchenunu

This project examined the reception of audience to cliff-hanging narratives as perceived by Mass Communication students of Uniben. The study was investigated to explore the reasons behind audience reactions and to know their reception of cliff hanging narratives, how audience receive series production from Nollywood. This study was able to point out that Nollywood movie producers have failed to see the importance of cliff-hanging narrative in a plot as they rush into production without carefully drawing out a good cliff-hanger that will be able to keep their audience glued to the story, hence they produce movie series with weak cliff-hangers, unable to seize the audience’s attention. The survey design was adopted for the study with the aid of 9-item questionnaire administered to 155 respondents purposively selected from the four levels in the department of Mass Communication in the University of Benin, Benin City, Edo State. Data obtained were analyzed and presented with the aid of Frequency Tables, Simple Percentage and Mean Scores. Therefore, the study concludes that audience do not show much interest in Nolywood movie series as a result of the poor implementation of cliff-hanging narratives, cliff-hangers play very important role in maintaining suspense in a plot in order to ensure the interest and focus of the audience, hence Nollywood producers must be very professional in the production process as they implement the cliff-hanging narrative.