''Very challenging,'' is the answer George Mazarakis, the executive producer and the impresario behind M-Net's highly acclaimed weekly news magazine Carte Blanche gave me when I ran into him a few days ago at M-Net's Vuka! Awards and asked him to tell me how he would describe the past year.
The always honest and very straightforward George Mazarakis who saw Carte Blanche through not only its 22nd year on the air this year, but also a law suit against the show, as well as two new spin-off editions, Carte Blanche Consumer and Carte Blanche Medical on M-Net since the beginning of the year, has ambivalent feelings.
''We had to produce three shows – Carte Blanche on a Sunday as well as Carte Blanche Medical and Carte Blanche Consumer – for the first time in our lives this year. With Carte Blanche Medical and Carte Blanche Consumer we had the same team producing all three shows, which is quite a challenge,'' he says. But he also describes 2010 holding the reigns at M-Net flagship investigative magazine show as ''exhilirating''.
''It was marvellous. But it was also testing. It was also the year that we went to court for R47 million which is the biggest amount the media has even been sued for in the history of South Africa. So we spent a month in court. Perhaps on some level I'd say it was the most exhilarating year and a wonderful year because it took us into new areas. On another level I'd say it was an annus horribilis,'' George Mazarakis tells me.
