Wake up Monday morning Mzansi. And if you did, you would suddenly have seen that the electronic programme guide (EPG) on MultiChoice's DStv for the SABC's SABC1 channel is now ... empty.
It appears that MultiChoice is no longer filling and populating SABC1's programming grid from today on DStv and just supplying a generic on-screen guide.
And I don't need to ask - as a TV critic I know exactly why: because SABC1 is not supplying the right, latest and accurate information and soon enough.
Do not blame MultiChoice or DStv.
Blame SABC1 and call them to complain - if you can even find anyone there to pick up the phone that is.
Keep in mind that the famously matricless Hlaudi Motsoeneng is currently the SABC's acting chief operations officer (COO). And that you top executives at any company directs, and is not just responsible for the day-to-day operations, but also infuse an organisation with their gestalt. How they are, probably their workers will also be.
With this little public act MultiChoice is revealing a dirty little secret from inside South Africa's TV industry - one which hardly ever gets any attention, is often overlooked, is taken for granted, and is often (when there's gripes from viewers) the actual place where a problem and wrong perception started.
It's a TV channel's people, usually their underqualified, incompetent or just lazy (or all three) so-called "publicity" people who are supposed to send out TV schedules, highlights, photos and programming information.
Ordinary viewers would be surprised at how many TV channels carry around complete dead weight in terms of people who are tasked to be the public mediator between TV channel and press or external service providers, and who simply don't do their jobs, are not qualified to, or are just lazy.
(There are pure gems out there too, indefatigable publicists who work their fingers to the bone, and they know exactly who they are. Today I'm not talking about you.)
A few years ago it took Rapport newspaper just one week to omit the entire week's TV schedules of kykNET (DStv 144) from its newspaper, saying that by the time of printing kykNET's schedules were not issued and available.
The next week those kykNET schedules were back and done. (That trash publicist who never did much, is also long-gone again in the every-changing revolving door of in-and-out's. Couldn't even say "goodbye" or "I'm leaving".)
For TV critics like myself - journalists and editors and people covering television or writing about the medium - or magazines who run schedules, and newspapers with their listings, it's an incredibly thankless job constantly trying to get, keep up to date with, read through, and then try and extract or cover certain stories.
Don't get me wrong. I simply love what I do and I diligently read a boring and mundane avalanche of schedules and updates and TV information daily - searching out those nuggets, scoops and precious bits of info you know you want to know. And as a diligent TV squirrel I will keep bringing it.
Now keep in mind the SABC with its 3 TV channels, e.tv with its list of channels, M-Net with its list of channels, the glut of channels on DStv, the list of channels on On Digital Media's StarSat, the various community TV channels and it's like pulling teeth getting some of those schedules directly from some of those over 200 TV channels in total on an ongoing basis.
Some like SABC2 publicity will still tell you and issue a schedule with Muvhango suddenly on five days a week from January just before everyone leaves for Christmas - only for it to not happen and then simply shrug and say "oh the schedule changed" with nobody who could even be bothered to even tell or amend a schedule or issue an updated schedule. Because TV critics' sense of smell is so well evolved. We can smell schedule changes.
Over the more than 13 years that I have covered television and the TV industry in South Africa, the one big irony is that although SABC1 is the biggest TV channel is the country when it comes to viewership figures, the channel is one of the worst when it comes to its schedule information and the general level of publicity in comparison to the other 90 or so who have dedicated publicity people in South Africa and abroad.
Some very small TV channels have incredibly dedicated (usually only one!) publicity teams who work incredibly hard to issue schedules and programming info. And then there's the ones who have so much resources and who simply can't care.
There's places whose mistake-riddled information, extremely badly done schedules, non-existent information and publicity photos often drive me bonkers late at night, places and people who never respond to enquiries, and who make me wonder who the incompetent people are who are being employed by certain TV channels who are actually damaging their channel's reputations and brands and who are getting paid to ironically drive viewers away because they don't know what is being shown.
My guess would be that MultiChoice simply exhausted all its avenues and options and is "dropping" SABC1 specific scheduling info from its DStv EPG (not really out of choice; what do you do when you simply don't have anything?).
The SABC generic schedule now being provided making it impossible for DStv subscribers to actually record specific programmes - especially for instance the CHAN 2014 soccer matches which besides SuperSport's channels are being shown on SABC1 and SABC2.
It has the result in that it creates an unintended (or maybe intended?) little name-and-shame - a warning shot fired across the bow that the specific TV channel needs to seriously, and quickly, improve its game if it wants to remain in the game.
And the name of the game is: Provide accurate TV schedules, timeously, with as detailed programming specific information as possible, in an ongoing way.
As a TV critic I wholeheartedly agree.
It's bad that it has to come to something like this, but I have great, great sympathy with whoever the group of people are, locked away in their small room in MultiChoice's Randburg building - hopefully fed and given clean water daily as they sit in front of the warm glow of their computer screens - trying their utmost to get schedules. It's often painful. I know.
I don't know them, but I can see them, chattering excitedly as they get a new completely &^%&*-up Excel schedule from a channel which simply doesn't care, then trying to decipher and rework it, and trying to do good work, daily, under often trying circumstances on an aspect of television which 99.9% of viewers never think about.
May Mzansi Never For Sure wake up and get to work to be better with this aspect soon.
Not for the sake of TV critics, EPG compilers and TV information services providers, but for their viewers who are forced to pay the SABC a TV licence fee and who are not getting what they deserve and pay for.
