The debilitating BlackBerry outage that crept into a third day while BlackBerry gave customers the silent treatment, has now spread to America where BlackBerry crashed and went down, while the non-service has started to impact South Africa's television industry. South African TV executives and workers within the medium in all spheres are seriously starting to feel the now more than just a nuisance effect and are being forced to take adaptive measures.
They - as well as the rest of the 2 million South African BlackBerry users - all have to make do without email, mobile internet access, BlackBerry Messenger. The South African TV industry thrives on the quick dissemanation of news, production sheets and updates that influence anything from split decisions over what cameraman is available for a B-roll shoot to executive level decisions.
South Africa's TV people are starting to limit their out of office time, spending less time away from the office with several who have adjusted their outlook (no pun intended) for Thursday and Friday. ''It's the email. You come back; there's 400 more in an hour it wasn't possible to work away,'' said one. Hardest hit are field producers, cameramen, publicists, reporters and news gatherers and even executives who've started redoing their diaries to spend less time away from the desk.
''Im fearful to miss something [important],'' said a very high-ranking South African television executive involved in the pay television sector, echoeing a shared sentiment from several producers. ''It's also difficult when you have to be out of the office and there's nothing [no email]. It probably from putting all your eggs in one basket and now the basket is broken,'' said another. Visiting European TV executives to South Africa described the situation as a nightmare. ''You just have to work around it and log in from computers as often as you can in business suites.''
Meanwhile the BlackBerry mess has spread to America that has so far been imune to the BlackBerry Blackout. The BlackBerry crash has now also debilitated Hollywood as the global outage is causing tinseltown to struggle to function, reports The Wrap. Hollywood was paralyzed in its tracks on Wednesday as well.
Meanwhile BlackBerry remains stoically-ironically vague and unwilling to openly communicate about the problem after causing the communication meltdown that has now almost spread around the world. BlackBerry has shown blatant disregard for South Africa and Africa but will probably respond immediately now that America has gone down where an entrenched consumer culture will demand answers.
[Full disclosure: The editor of TV with Thinus also uses this mobile device.]
