A few weeks ago already a courier delivered this mysterious big black briefcase to my door. The Sony Entertainment Television (DStv 113) tag on the outside said "The Firm" and I immediately realised that it was undoubtedly going to contain publicity and marketing material for the new drama The Firm which I scooped at the beginning of April would start on Monday 7 May - which is today at 20:00.
I get inundated by press releases daily, as well as answers from TV channels in South Africa and all over the world, and PR companies when they bother to answer and give attention to my media enquiries, and then I have to watch a lot of television and actually write about it all. It's incredibly time-consuming.
So I immediately liked the way Sony Entertainment Television, and the PR firm doing their publicity - Total Exposure - actually took some time to think of a really great way of actually sending show info which ties into the theme of The Firm - instead of just issuing the bland usual-usual stuff which mostly happens.
The briefcase for The Firm immediately got my attention and broke through the clutter because it was apt, it was timeous, it immediately connected to the show and me as a TV critic to the show.
When I opened the briefcase even the packaging was basically perfect. Inside a mysterious black briefcase you want to find a brown envelope with secretive contents.
The black briefcase for The Firm contained not gifts, but useful, practical information and everything pertaining to the show a TV critic and writer actually really wants and needs.
Sony Entertainment Television had a screener of The Firm epsides (and threw some new season Leverage in as well), a newly published issue of the novel, a 8GB USB and a complete set of cast notes, the full creative team, scene notes, sets, show info presented as "evidence" and a show synopsis. Included as well was complete episode loglines with episode break-downs and titles and summaries and notes to online links.
A week ago, because I haven't heard anything, I reached out to M-Net to hear what is happening regarding Big Brother StarGame starting on Sunday. I also asked how would photos work and info of the contestants - and I explained as I have in the past with this show, again, how difficult it is to get a massive amount of information and photos and then process it as an info dump and try to do some kind of writing and stories about it in such a short turn-around time.
I was told M-Net would see what's possible and get back to me. No-one ever did. And I decided I'm not wasting more time by asking again when the end of Friday eventually rolled around. On Sunday night just before 23:00 suddenly a press release arrived with the massive contestant information.
As if M-Net didn't know I already indicated that, yes please, I do want photos and images (and actually sooner rather than hours after Big Brother StarGame started) and didn't do anything to talk to me about some kind of embargoed issuing of material before Sunday arrived, M-Net said in the late Sunday night press release "pics and images can be provided on request". I just shook my head and decided to move on. Must I really then again respond just before midnight on a Sunday night and go: "Yes, please, may I please have photos?" as if nothing of the preceding week's requests happened?
I also lecture, so lets ask what I would ask the students. If on a Monday morning, as a TV critic, there are two new TV shows you could potentially write about and you had no more time to prep, do research and you have to write one TV story - what would you choose?
Which TV channel recognised that a TV critic is interested and took time and energy to try and find out more about a show and then responded by making information available? Who gave enough information, and with enough time to spare to work through it, to make the TV critic's task of doing homework about a show as easy as possible?
If you have to look at the information you have on Monday morning, if you look at what show has something visual to use with text, what show would be easier to write something about because the amount of time, effort and energy you need to spend on it is easiest?
With about 80 TV channels on MultiChoice's DStv and about 50 on TopTV as well as SABC1, SABC2, SABC3 and e.tv to cover as well as community TV channels, its becoming increasingly crowded for the small number of South African TV critics to keep track of it all. I try my best. But imagine getting only an hour and being told you need to run through and see as much of the New York Zoo as possible for a quiz on all the different animals afterwards. Increasingly impossible.
Television very much remains a zoo, and in South Africa a growing one. A zoo in which most people notice either the most exotic animals, or those who make the most interesting, or the loudest noise.
