What is happening in the world of television today? There's the new crop of contestants in the videosphere-overexposure of the umpteenth incantation of Big Brother Africa starting, Royal Wedding specials still permeate the air like those bitter-ender wedding guests who refuse to realize that the time has finally come to leave the party while the caterers are already packing up, and oh … TopTV is turning one year old today.
Don't feel bad about it if you didn't know. The South African pay TV operator that started its commercial service exactly a year ago on 1 May 2010 isn't making a song and dance about it – in fact, TopTV isn't making any song and dance about it, and deliberately chose not to talk to the press about turning one year old today at all.
TopTV's refusal – despite multiple requests for interviews first made weeks ago and enquiries about what On Digital Media (ODM) plans to do about the first birthday of TopTV – was oddly/bizarrely/strikingly met with deafening silence for a media company operating and competing in a hyper media age. That same silence held lease today on the actual birthday one year later with TopTV not issuing as much as a press release or a one-liner statement to the press. TopTV's CEO Vino Govender meanwhile is lounging on long leave for Easter and not willing or seemingly able to talk to and engage the press. The elusive (and now revealed to be an extremely press reclusive) CEO in charge of running TopTV isn't willing to talk to journalists or do interviews. Neither are any other executives in charge of operational management at the pay TV operator made available or trotted out to talk. There's been no press conference; no first birthday party.
''Maybe business is crap?'' muses the top editor of a South African trade publication that also covers television, in the past week to me regarding TopTV. The person's thought highlights exactly why TopTV's silence is so sickening to the one year old company: in the absence of TopTV talking, it creates a bubble where speculation starts, builds and which then leads to the kind of (negative) buzz within the industry and the press that no company wants or needs.
With TopTV not talking on its first birthday, the pay TV platform is giving rise to new questions not pondered before: Why is TopTV scared to talk? Is something wrong with TopTV's future prospects? Why does TopTV feel it has nothing to say about what it's done and achieved the past year – is service levels too bad? And why the silent treatment?
The remaining goodwill (and there was a lot, and to be fair, there is still left) that the media, press and ad buyers – even subscribers – had towards TopTV is dissipating fast. Several factors are contributing. Sadly, one of them that TopTV actually has control about – to be engaging and open, talking freely and getting free press and exposure (of the kind that builds the television entity as a desirable service) by reacting to and stoking the embers of an interested press – isn't happening.
One year in it's not possible to know what exactly TopTV's top brass is really thinking. One thing however can't be any clearer about the TV company and its muted management. On its first birthday we do know now – as if emphasized by its succinct silence: TopTV isn't in the mood for talking.
