TopTV continues to come across as vastly amateur in several areas, notably the way the pay TV provider communicates - or communicates ... wrongly: would you believe TopTV just held a press preview for upcoming programming but just for journalists and TV critics in Johannesburg and blatantly dissing Cape Town where in reality the larger number of (and probably better) group of TV writers reside.
It defies belief.
The words of Eddie Mbalo, TopTV's interim CEO, rings shallowly hollow and completely fake when he says TopTV wants to communicate better. The truth is that it is nothing but empty thetoric with basically no substance or realness. To blatantly cut off and cut out a sizeable chunk of journalists who's job it is to write about TopTV and its programming who then are unable to tell subscribers and potential subscribers about what will be shown, is not communicating better.
Add to the astounding irony is that this press preview is the first time TopTV is actually talking to the press collectively since the one press conference when TopTV launched. It's extremely amateur, arrogant, shortsighted, uninformed and reveals that TopTV probably doesn't really know or get the unspoken contextual way in which everybody from Ster Kinekor and Nu Metro to the SABC, e.tv, M-Net, MultiChoice and separate overseas TV channels who are seen in South Africa all do press screenings. It would be laughable, if it wasn't so breathtakingly ... shocking?
Exactly a week ago I wrote to TopTV to explain that it's incredibly pathetic, sad, and not actually fostering better relationships and impressions amongst journalists about TopTV to completely ignore Cape Town. Anybody who knows this business and knows the journalists covering television, the TV critics, the TV writers and all the noted, regular people who have any kind of substantial platform or publication covering South African television, will know that point by point, name by name, there's more of them in Cape Town.
Of course uninformed, conventional wisdom will dictate - if you're clueless like TopTV - that you need to have or only need to care about doing a single press briefing or screening in Johannesburg. And after two full years as a commercial operation TopTV have still - amazingly - not even realized or puzzled out the finer nuances of how to do press events as an industry standard.
And here's what nobody's saying, but that I did: The TV writers and critics specifically covering television and TV programming from a consumer content point will remain silent. They have lots of things every day to write about. But what TopTV simply doesn't get is that they're silently upsetting and actually continuing to damage the perception of their company.
Huisgenoot, You and Drum, Emile Butler, Tashi Tagg, Sam Brighton, Bianca Coleman, The Callsheet, Karin Burger, Fair Lady, Seventeen, Clayton Morar, Channel24 and a whole range of other formidable writers and publications who are heavy-hitters are not going to implore TopTV to do a press screening in Cape Town. They just silently smile, remember, and will most probably continue to not write about TopTV and TopTV programming - or as much as could be the case. Meanwhile TopTV continues to embarrass itself by failing to do press screenings right and cuts out what is probably perceived as a little "backwater place" at its own peril.
Cape Town has (ironically) name for name more, better, stronger and bigger national reach writing journalists and editors collectively, specifically covering television than based in Johannesburg. It makes TopTV's location based discrimination unfathomable. Does even the SABC fly Durban journalists and TV writers to Johannesburg for the Johannesburg screenings? No. They are taken to Cape Town.
And really ask any publicist around a while at any TV channel where the more questions come from, where sustainable critics and writers are located who's also been doing it for the longest time (we're talking individuals each with decades people), and you'll hear the reality.
It's quietly irritating and antagonising journalists and TV writers whose job it is to write about television and who would actually love to write about it, your channels and shows - but can't. It create a no-win, no-win.
We all attended the TopTV launch, we have all been waiting patiently for almost 2 years for further press conferences or actual any interaction with the company regarding pressers or regular screenings – but TopTV has to take the initiative.Right now TopTV is spending money to actually piss off one half of the press covering the company.
Take one good guess: If I for instance see magazine or newspaper or website X write about something to which I was excluded access, the longterm loss of that isn't that I wasn't able to also do a similar story at that moment. It's the relational "damage"over a long term period that grows and develops out of it.
Do I feel more or less inclined to use a TopTV channel show next month when I suddenly have a block open for a snippet or a story? Do I feel more or less inclined to care to cover the next thing TopTV does because I was not "important" enough for TopTV to engage with me as it does with a competitor simply because they're based in Johannesburg? Am I more or less inclined to run and make stories out of press releases and other information coming from TopTV when that is issued in future - if I was apparently not important enough to be counted when TopTV did something where I felt I should have been?
How difficult is it really for TopTV to dispatch a TopTV representative or person to Cape Town, to hire a venue like the little mini cinema business theatre in The Pepper Club or The 12 Apostles Hotel that seats 20 people and do the same screening a day before or after Johannesburg (which took place yesterday)?
Even the SABC will send the channel heads of their specific channels to Cape Town to introduce programming, speak to us, take questions and show what they have to offer. Regularly.
But all of that is a realisation that TopTV has to come to, and make for itself.
Something very simple like showing upcoming programming in the end does more than just that.
It shows that you care.
