Dueling drama endured on Wednesday behind the scenes as South Africa's TV critics, journalists covering TV, and editors of frothy gossip mags dispatching their minions, were all split between attending the finale of SABC3's Strictly Come Dancing reality show or the finale of M-Net's MasterChef South Africa - both broadcasting their finales and announcing winners on the same night.
South Africa's fickle flock of entertainment and TV hacks - from editors to junior writers - pondered and in whispers buzzed among themselves since Monday about where to go and what to attend: MasterChef South Africa in Sandton or Strictly Come Dancing at Auckland Park.
Nobody wants to have missed the better story the next day; even more of them don't want to miss the better goodie swag bag who care more about what they are personally going to score than actually covering news.
Thus the dueling reality show finales presented the biggest conundrum in conflicting South African television events since the night of 28 October 2010 when the SA's Got Talent finale on SABC2 took place on the same night as MultiChoice's press and media event in a hired Houghton mansion.
(Guess which one won then because the bulk of the press decided to endure a rainy night for possible expensive presents instead of covering news. Yes, go look at the number of press clippings on 29 October and see the winner - and loser.)
On Wednesday evening both SABC3's Strictly Come Dancing and M-Net's MasterChef South Africa lured an even group of editors and journalists to their respective television events.
With corporate downsizing and ongoing skeletal looking editorial staff at dailies, weeklies, fortnightlies and even monthlies one of the entertainment publishing industry's big secrets in South Africa is that there's no longer multiple journalists and TV critics on standby to cover multiple simultaneous events.
An ever diminishing number of magazines and newspapers in South Africa are able to send journalists to cover both or multiple events within a genre such as music, film or television on the same day and at the same time - which results in some difficult decisions and choices from time to time.
Press and TV critics flying in from Durban, Cape Town and elsewhere in the country to Johannesburg also had a hard choice to make similar to colleagues at rival publications based in Johannesburg - strictly Dancing or strictly MasterChef.
Interestingly, looking at the split of veteran TV critics and longtime journalists covering the TV and entertainment industry and looking at who preferred to attend which event - both drew about an even number of longtime rival journalists with some going to Strictly Come Dancing and some going to MasterChef South Africa.
With a celebrity fashion show event on Wednesday evening also in the mix as a third attention-seeking "pick me" function taking place, journalists who briefly did show at the TV show-and-tells, actually absconded early, making arrangements to get copy and juicy titbits from freelance journalists and other attendees, as they rushed to try and cover the third event.
M-Net sent out its press release announcing the winner of MasterChef South Africa at 21:02; SABC3 issued its press statement at 22:40 as journalists at both event took to twitter, their iPads and laptops to make the late night deadlines for Thursday publications.
