In the one episode of Dr Quinn Medicine Woman, a snake-oil salesman came to Colorado Springs and starts selling an elixir of life that's nothing really.
I'm already laughing at the fooled investors, hysterical journalists and clueless publications who will be doing breathless stories for the nation from today's presentation of The MultiChoice Group's financial year report to end of March 2019 showing how amazingly and much more bigger enormous MultiChoice's Showmax and DStv Now are compared to its rival Netflix South Africa and elsewhere in Africa.
The golden rule in financial reporting - and in life: Something of nothing remains nothing.
Hilariously - but sh*tty hilarious, not funny hilarious - and in a very surreal way, The MultiChoice Group doesn't want to give any actual user and subscriber numbers for its DStv Now and Showmax services run by its Connected Video division.
You can't make sh*t like this up.
MultiChoice is telling investors and the media that when it comes to online streaming services and it's "competitive position", its Showmax and DStv Now in comparison to Netflix is 1.6 times more.
MultiChoice's Showmax and DStv Now "nothing" is now 1.6 times bigger than Netflix's "nothing".
Oh, and the Netflix "nothing" that nobody is allowed to know, is "a MultiChoice Group estimate of Netflix users" if you put on glasses and read the fine print.
Firstly, MultiChoice estimates a Netflix user number in South Africa (or Africa - or both. Who knows?).
Secondly that estimate number isn't given to investors or the press.
Thirdly, MultiChoice estimates on the estimation, to get to a 1.6 times larger estimation.
Bless.
MultiChoice's nothing-compared-to-nothing comparison looks more ridiculous that Hlaudi Motsoeneng at the SABC who at least made up actual symbols and gave himself an "E" for Bible Study and a "F" for History when he faked his matric certificate.
Now investors must buy shares in The MultiChoice Group because Showmax and DStv Now are more popular based on undisclosed figures. The press must write puff pieces with clickbait headlines like "MultiChoice's Showmax is more popular than Netflix in South Africa/Africa" or things to that nature.
Who's responsible for this trash? If you're not going to tell diners paying to eat at your restaurant what the food is, rather don't even print or give them a menu. Just serve the food then.
Giving an empty page and trying to fake trash because you don't want to give anything but want to make it look as if you're giving something, is low-class fakery like when Scope magazine in South Africa's seventies would allude to boob but block out the nipple.
Because the numbers are likely very small and because MultiChoice and Connected Video don't want to show their cards to competitors they are under the mistaken impression that doing some David Copperfield no-numbers game is trick enough.
Sadly for MultiChoice, it might fool some most of the time, but it won't fool everyone all of the time.
Don't forget that MultiChoice's Connected Video's active users massively jumped and doubled from 2018 to 2019 - wow, just look at that! - from ... oh wait ... to what-what?
Don't forget that MultiChoice had a whopping 50 times increased activity on its Showmax and DStv Now services in 2019 compared to 2016 when it was just - oh, wait a minute ...
ALSO READ: MultiChoice does little to stop the drop of DStv Premium subscribers other than have the call centre phone them after they had already cancelled; top-end segment still 'a long way off' from being 'unable to wash itself' and being unprofitable.
ALSO READ: TV CRITIC's NOTEBOOK. MultiChoice CEO, Calvo Mawela, has started spouting some inane gibberish about millennials not wanting or able to watch 90 minutes of something. Get a child - and get a grip.
ALSO READ: TV CRITIC's NOTEBOOK. Higher prices are not killing DStv Premium - MultiChoice's lack of showing DStv subscribers why it's worth it, constantly diluting it, and failure to add value is what's damaging it.
ALSO READ: DStv subscribers keep increasing although MultiChoice continues to lose top-end DStv Premium customers who no longer see it as offering enough value for money.
ALSO READ: TV CRITIC's NOTEBOOK. MultiChoice lies and says in its financial report presentation it 'enhanced content discovery' - in reality the pay-TV operator did the exact opposite during the year and made it more difficult and worse.
