South Africa's TV establishment, some of the highest ranking TV executives in the country, attended the SA Sports Awards 2012 live ceremony from the Sandton Convention Centre last night - but several who were used as presenters of categories came across as completely unprepared, unprepped and unsure of what exactly to do.
Lulama Mokhobo, the SABC CEO presented a category together with Imtiaz Patel, the group CEO of MultiChoice South Africa. The SABC's acting chief operating officer (COO), Hlaudi Motsoeneng was inexplicably also trotted out to be a category presenter.
Lulama Mokhobo and Imtiaz Patel was far from the worst, although their presenting duo pair-up suffered from bad direction, production and mistakes as did basically ever other presenting link in the terrible live broadcast.
Due to the simply terrible production values of the live cast shown on SABC1 and on SuperSport 4 on DStv, Lulama Mokhobo and Imtiaz Patel they even had a live open mic when they shouldn't yet have had. So viewers at home heard a bit of the live tete-a-tete between Lulama Mokhobo and Imtiaz Patel. "... gonna read that at the back," viewers heard Imtiaz Patel say. "Yeah," said Lulama Mokhobo.
Then they just stood there. In awkward silence.
Lulama Mokhobo realized, or possibly finally got stage direction from the floor manager. "Oh. And I'm very proud to announce that the winner is ..." Then Imtiaz Patel started to fumble and seemed to struggle to open the envelope with the winner's name in it. "Quickly! Quickly!" said Lulama Mokhobo.
It was very bad television - similar to basically all of the other presenters who had a very difficult time with the over-intricate and simply inappropriate envelopes.
Viewers also saw Hlaudi Motsoeneng. The SABC's acting COO who simply stared straight ahead. He was possibly trying to make out what he saw before him. Words. On the big teleprompter screen at the back. Neither he nor his co-presenter did anything while all that viewers got were silence. Then eventually they both started reading - but at the same time and the exact same lines. It was not professional and cringe-inducing to watch.
ALSO READ: REVIEW: The SABC Sports Awards 2012 broadcast on SABC1 and SuperSport resembles a third rate late night Hillbrow nightclub.
