Pravin Gordham, the minister of finance, seated second from the left, is holding up his hand looking out into the breakfast tabled audience - is he maybe looking to find black men or black women? Why, any women for that matter would do.
The staged panel for the television launch breakfast briefing of Business Day TV (DStv 412) - the rebranded Summit TV on MultiChoice's DStv satellite pay-TV service now with stripped daily content blocks from Bloomberg Television - oddly only featured men, no women. And mostly white men. Even Bloomberg Television's moderator this morning was a white man - Guy Johnson.
During the broadcast of the event which took place on Wednesday morning, Business Day TV also inexplicably placed a red "R" for repeat in the screen corner. But it wasn't a rebroadcast. It was a live event.
In television image is (almost) everything. It's strange why Business Day TV with the brands of Bloomberg and DStv seen on the white backdrop, didn't have a more representative panel in terms of Africa or South Africa's economically empowered demographics on the white stage and in the white chairs, especially since Business Day TV purports to cover South African and African financial and economic news.
As a media outlet you want to look a bit like what you cover, especially in something like a relaunch or launch event broadcast. You want to reflect your audience and subject matter, and African and South African business isn't a predominantly white business executive affair.
Or maybe it is exactly reflective of part of the problematic challenge still facing South Africa - that what is shown, ironically, on the Business Day TV white stage is what the upper echelons of South African business in this country, almost 20 years since 1994, still largely is.
