Photo: Huisgenoot
Disclaimer and full disclosure first - in the past the person on the left was one of my previous magazine editors; in the past the person on the right was one of my previous magazine editors.
And they look very stern and cross on this posed photo but they're not really - only if that Sibo brings the circulation figures on a Friday and a bad Smallville or Vania's Backstage cover story had a circ number falling slighty below 135 000. Sigh. Those were the good ol' (funny) days.
Both gave me a lot of free reign and scope to bring my ideas and to suggest how to execute it, and in turn I worked myself into a stupor digging up all the news about television and getting the inside scoop to take and excitedly share every new day. Now someone else can maybe get that chance too.
I want to spill that a new local reality TV show entitled Saktyd is coming to kykNET (DStv 111) later in the year with the reality cameras that will follow people who want to work at the red top Huisgenoot in Cape Town. That's where Izelle Venter (left) and Wicus Pretorius (right) have been working with Haidee Muller (in the middle) who's one of the journalists.
People can now enter to be on Saktyd and has until 20 April to do so. Successful candidates will be put through their paces in an environment not unlike Jane By Design and Ugly Betty (once I laughed when one of these previous editors said dryly in the office: ''This is not Ugly Betty''. Actually, I think it always is.)
Get ready for stres and insanity if you're a finalist, but if you really have what it takes, you actually live for deadlines and this kind of ''news and scoop'' environment.
Anyway, Saktyd which will have 13 episodes will follow in the footsteps of the disappointing Style Intern reality show of 2010 which was set inside Fair Lady - another magazine within Media24's publishing division.
Sources tell me Homebrew Films in Cape Town will be the production company behind Saktyd, Homebrew Films also produces Roer and the new Bravo! for kykNET, Shoreline for SABC3 and All Access Mzansi for Mzansi Magic (DStv 107) as well as other productions.
Perhaps Saktyd will be better in pacing, structure, contestant selection, actual drama and judges not afraid to be a bit like Simon Cowell? Everything and everyone in Style Intern was too nice which made it bland and boring. The show limped along and faded away like a previous month's old magazine.
For this reality show I'm told a pilot was shot; I hear one of the working titles was Die Nuuskantoor, which seems to have changed now to Saktyd.
Izelle Venter was once on television on TV1 as one of Saartjie's friends; Wicus Pretorius was on television in an episode of SABC2's Revlon Supermodel as a judge - viewers are surely going to see a lot of them in Saktyd since they're editor and deputy editor. The witty popular culture expert Haidee Muller weighed in on local celebs in kykNET's 10 Uit 10 vox pop culturati show.
Contestants don't need to have any journalism background, but I would strongly suggest you get and start watching Ugly Betty DVD box sets. Because you don't want to walk in there and have the receptionist ask: ''Are you the before?'' No. You want to be the ''after''.
The winner will get guaranteed work for a year at the magazine.
