If I were Discovery Networks International (DNI) or A+E Networks UK I would really be upset with DStv over this. In fact, livid.
I often watch television and just shake my head at the obvious mistakes. Like last night again when I watched a marketing TV promo from DStv for several upcoming shows.
I just wish the people doing marketing or putting the on-air marketing material at MultiChoice together for channels would actually watch the shows and know the shows. Then things like this wouldn't happen.
Unless of course its done deliberately, which I don't think it is. But it's still bad and shows the lack of attention to basics and detail and people working in TV who are clearly not watching television at all.
Last night I just happen to co-incidentally catch this new DStv on-air promo for shows on Discovery and History and a few other channels. I instantly saw a mistake. The promo is played over and over and over on many channels.
The problem is that a photo from one channel and content provider, and its own on-air star, is very blatantly and completely incorrectly used for another channel and another content provider's show. And they're competitors. It's so wrong. And besides that it's so ... just not nice.
It would have been funny it it wasn't so totally stupid and just plainly wrong.
This is how MultiChoice's latest promo start for shows from Discovery, History and other channels on DStv:
The moment I saw this, my eyes went wide. Like, really? Dave Salmoni on History? Dave Salmoni from Discovery Channel and Animal Planet on the History channel?
Someone at DStv needs to educate themselves or re-educate themselves as to who Dave Salmoni is and who has been to South Africa many times and to and Discovery upfronts in South Africa twice.
Dave Salmoni is a star and talent of Discovery Networks International and their Discovery Channel and Animal Planet. He is not on A+E Networks UK's History (DStv 186) and he is not even in a show called Ancient Impossible.
Somehow DStv took a photo of Mission Impossible, the reality show that was on M-Net and which DStv should even be using at all or have access to - and is using that to market a show that Dave Salmoni is not a part of, of on a channel he is not on, from a show that isn't even on either Discovery or History but was on M-Net (DStv 101).
The Mission Impossible publicity image is the large image above, and as you can see, suddenly used and inserted below for a show with another name, on a channel it's not on, with a star that isn't in it:
I really don't want to hear that it's a little mistake. I don't want to hear that it's an accident. I don't want to hear that people who work in television and who are supposed to be the experts don't know better.
It's embarrassing for people who know and who watch television and who care, and its embarrassing to DStv, Discovery, A+E Networks UK, the Discovery Channel and the History channel.
When you go to a shop and the wrong price is on an item consumer law says you have to get it at that price. Is MultiChoice going to show Ancient Impossible with Dave Salmoni? No.
The bulk of television I watch as a TV critic is recorded.So I don't just switch on and watch stuff and on the recorded shows I fast forward over most if not all of the promos and adverts unless they're interesting, which means I don't really see or study them.
When I just switched on my television yesterday evening, this was the first live, linear promo on a DStv channel that popped up. I immediately saw the problem and wondered how many other things are being promo'ed constantly that has mistakes like this.
At the worst its deceptive advertising, and the least worst it shows incompetence from someone - and how people in television are not actually watching television, and not even watching it after things go to air.
There is not just one person working at MultiChoice, and not just one person working with on-air marketing and promos. None of them, none of them saw this, or noticed that it's wrong. Multiple people employed because they know content and work with TV content and to market that content.
The DStv promo using Dave Salmoni wrongly keeps running - so obviously nobody else has noticed, or doesn't care.
