National Geographic Channel
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I can exclusively reveal that while South African TV viewers and moviegoers are blissfully watching their international TV shows and going to the movies, behind the scenes South African broadcasters and film distributors have been and are being impacted by that Iceland ash cloud over Europe.
The ash cloud that has been and is still disrupting international flights since April is also having an impact on TV and movie content destined for South Africa like TV shows and movie features destined for cinemas.
Several sources at various South African TV stations as well as movie houses told me that they've already had to deal with the fall-out of the Iceland volcano's disruption to their normal supply schedule of TV shows as well as films delivered on video cassette, disks and film prints. Not only did the ash cloud necessitate date changes, some also had to make other logistical plans to get content to South Africa and in other ways. Some have content being held up overseas as you're reading here, because of a backlog of cargo that can't be shipped. Movie distributors in South Africa that I know are affected, haven't yet responded officially to enquiries I've made.
''M-Net has been affected. The ash cloud has had an impact on M-Net,'' Lani Lombard, head of publicity at M-Net tells me. ''We've had delays of between two and three weeks on some TV content but right at this moment we have everything we need to play out for the next few weeks.''
E.tv unofficially responded that the broadcaster is not aware of any impact at the moment and MultiChoice also unofficially responded that the pay TV platform is not affected and don't foresee any impact in the future. Since I first asked all the broadcasters yesterday, the SABC's three TV channels, SABC1, SABC2 and SABC3 are all still looking into the matter with one of the channels describing the matter to me as ''technical''. Another channel also actually called me back to say its ''a highly technical matter''. All three are investigating and don't want to give me an official response yet.
UPDATE Tuesday, 16:23: SABC1 just came back to me with an official response. ''We have not experienced any disruptions due to volcanic ash,'' says Vukile Madlala, SABC1's publicity manager.
