Married at First Sight South Africa is "one of the trickiest territories" in the world in which to produce the format show from Red Arrow International, says the executive producer of the South African version, Rebecca Fuller-Campbell, who touched on issues ranging from lobola to gay marriage at the DStv Media Showcase on Thursday.
"Married at First Sight is a social experiment. It's an experiment that's taken place in 25 territories, there have been multiple versions of it, and at least a 50% success rate, so actually it's more successful than normal marriages," said Oxyg3n Media's Rebecca Fuller-Campbell at the DStv Media Showcase panel discussion session.
Married at First Sight SA is A+E Networks UK's second local commissioned show for South Africa, following Four Weddings SA also on Lifetime (DStv 131).
"We've got one of the trickiest territories to produce it in with 11 national languages; multiple - absolutely diverse, and we really have to consider that," Rebecca Fuller-Campbell told the press.
"We're genuinely looking for people that want to find love, that had difficulty finding love but have tried everything."
Rebecca Fuller-Campbell said Married At First Sight South Africa has "to represent South Africa and its diversity. We're not looking to match three Afrikaans couples. We're looking to find different people so we can represent our own diversity here."
"There are many challenges that we came up against. One of those is the obvious question of lobola. How do we tackle that?" she said.
"If lobola is important to a family - is part of a tradition in a culture - we have to look at it. What we do in Married At First Sight that is one of the things that we are looking for when we are assessing, is, 'Is this something that is important in your tradition?"
"And if it is, we have a lobola negotiator, we work with the families. We don't pay the lobola, it's still on you - just so you know that," Rebecca Fuller-Campbell said.
"Don't enter if you want your lobola paid, it's not going to happen."
Rebecca Fuller-Campbell was asked by panel moderator Neil Andrews if Married At First Sight South Africa will include gay marriage.
"I think it's very much something that we're looking at going forward in the future. In principle we are very, very open to it. We'd love it, it's happened in another territory."
"There's sensitivities around it, bearing in mind that we flight all the way through Africa, and so we have to be respectful of different cultures and different opinions."
According to Rebecca Fuller-Campbell no gay people have applied to be on Married At First Sight South Africa.
If there were to be more seasons of Married At First Sight South Africa, it will be interesting to see if gay marriage will be included, given the important issue of the growing censorship-creep of content seen across a growing number of DStv channels as other African countries clamp down on freedom of expression as far as TV shows are concerned.
It is something that is becoming an even bigger issue and problem, and that in turn directly affects what South Africans can or can't see.
The second season of Married At First Sight SA will start on Lifetime (DStv 131) on Friday 6 October at 20:50 and the first episode will be a reunion show.
The first episode of the new season will revisit everyone who participated in the first season and show where they are now. The next 8 episodes will then follow the new participants.
PERSONAL TAKE:
■ The Married At First Sight SA panel session was the only awkward session of the DStv Media Showcase.
■ It carried on for way too long, moderator Neil Andrews wasn't properly briefed and didn't know it was the second season already that is starting. He kept speaking, asking questions and commenting as if it's a new show, until he was corrected.
■ Presenter Sam Cowen wasn't present and part of the panel with no explanation about her absence - unless it was said and I missed it. It wasn't "wrong" but just struck me as odd. The other panelists working on the show, besides Rebecca Fuller-Campbell, were not that interesting - I doubt that there will be stories about what they said.
■ No trailer or sizzle reel was shown that was about the upcoming second season - again very weird when you've assembled a room full of media and TV critics to showcase your show.
Visuals (that was actually from the first season) confused Neil Andrews who said "that blond chick worries me. I've only seen a little snippet but she looks like hard work and I haven't even met her."
Rebecca Fuller-Campbell had to explain that "what we've showed you was clips from the last series, so from the first series, because we don't want to give away to much about the coming series. So that was last year."
Compare that to the effort and utter wow-factor when BBC Worldwide and MultiChoice later in the day showed a beautiful sizzle reel of the upcoming Blue Planet II on BBC Earth (DStv 184) and did trust the media enough to show something new to stimulate excitement with the press.
■ Married at First Sight SA didn't work that well as a drawn-out panel discussion and I thought it could/would have been much more effective and impactful if A+E Networks Africa and the show just did a type of "activation" like Lifetime maybe "sponsoring" or redressing one of the DStv Media Showcase tea breaks.
The 10:30 tea break could have looked like M-Net's brilliant recent media launch of The Wedding Bashers.
Imagine one of the tea breaks with flowers, little "wedding cakes" and pop-up banners from Lifetime and the show.
Imagine 3 or 4 "couples" just silently standing around, two-by-two, in wildly differing wedding regalia - lets say a black Xhosa man next to an Indian woman - and so on, making for jarring contrasts and driving home the must-watch gawk-factor that compelling TV thrives on.
■ A brouhaha erupted on the sidelines of this panel that involves me, and that I was blissfully unaware of until the end when there was a tea break.
Live-tweeting the panel discussion on social media, in one of the tweets I said "Married at First Sight SA exec prod says wont include gays on Lifetime (DStv 131) since channel's seen in rest of Africa."
There was no thanks about the ongoing reporting and attention given to the show (and lets be clear: none is ever wanted nor expected) but instead just criticism, and over one tweet.
It's obviously a sensitive issue and I fully get that. However, when you approach a journalist or editor to complain or criticise, perhaps pull the person aside, introduce yourself first, say something like "Hi, I'm so and so, thank you for [think of any compliment like covering our show]," and then criticise and bring up your issue or complaint.
Also: The gay marriage Married at First Sight SA issue wasn't a question originated by one of the invited journalists and wasn't brought up by the attending press - it was brought up by the DStv media showcase and the show - something they decided to highlight.
I covered what was presented, as well as other newsworthy aspects of it. If it wasn't brought up, it wouldn't have been a "thing".
