While panelists like Yolisa Phahle (MultiChoice CEO for general entertainment), John Ugbe (MultiChoice Nigeria managing director), Nkateko Mabaso (acting M-Net CEO), Wangi Mba-Uzoukwu (M-Net West Africa director) and the 3 MultiChoice Talent Factory directors Njoki Muhoho, Berry Lwando and Femi Odugbemi all attended in Lagos, Nigeria and spoke, neither M-Net nor MultiChoice bothered to release any press statements, audio or a rush-transcript for the media about it.
While M-Net and MultiChoice are multinational, pan-African companies and hold up the Africa Magic Viewers' Choice Awards as a continental type of awards show and competition, the organisers don't seem to really bother, or want to bother, with making the effort of properly including East or Southern Africa beyond the most superficial level.
MultiChoice and M-Net marketing exec and publicist haven't bothered to issue any information or even a bare-bones transcript, speeches or just notes with talking points, about the exec panel discussion.
The question is why. Are they lazy? Are they incompetent? Are they not aware that it matter? Are they really so clueless that there are media who find it important enough to cover and who would actually want to report on what the pay-TV provider's executives have to say?
Why make the effort of organising a public panel with company executives, and then not actually pass the final hurdle of communicating properly what was said there to media who can't physically attend?
Some press did attend but themselves haven't bothered to report anything about what was actually said at the panel discussion.
This again follows the established pattern of superficial coverage and largely non-coverage of invited media who annually end up doing very little at the Africa Magic Viewers' Choice Awards although their purpose is supposedly to cover the actual event and things like the panel discussion leading up to it.
The AMVCA organisers and M-Net and MultiChoice should be doing better with media relations and getting information out, and to, the actual journalists and media really covering the TV industry on the continent, but either doesn't know how, or doesn't care to do this better or properly.
The panel discussion apparently would have revolved around how MultiChoice and M-Net is growing original African television programming and investing in films, what these companies are doing to promote new talent, how the new MultiChoice Talent Factory works and what MultiChoice and M-Net are contributing to the continent's video entertainment sector.
The information and the opportunity for the Africa Magic Viewers' Choice Awards, as well as M-Net and MultiChoice to communicate all of this, would have been interesting but also valuable to not just the TV and film industry across Africa to hear, but also to the broader public who might be following what these companies do and what they are involved in.
Sadly that opportunity of course is lost.
There will however be lots of photos of women in pretty dresses as the Africa Magic Viewers' Choice Awards deliberately dilutes, through inaction, the focus of what it can really communicate to the public and the industry about what is being done to invest and help improve television and film in Africa.
The AMVCA organisers and M-Net and MultiChoice should be doing better with media relations and getting information out, and to, the actual journalists and media really covering the TV industry on the continent, but either doesn't know how, or doesn't care to do this better or properly.
The panel discussion apparently would have revolved around how MultiChoice and M-Net is growing original African television programming and investing in films, what these companies are doing to promote new talent, how the new MultiChoice Talent Factory works and what MultiChoice and M-Net are contributing to the continent's video entertainment sector.
The information and the opportunity for the Africa Magic Viewers' Choice Awards, as well as M-Net and MultiChoice to communicate all of this, would have been interesting but also valuable to not just the TV and film industry across Africa to hear, but also to the broader public who might be following what these companies do and what they are involved in.
Sadly that opportunity of course is lost.
There will however be lots of photos of women in pretty dresses as the Africa Magic Viewers' Choice Awards deliberately dilutes, through inaction, the focus of what it can really communicate to the public and the industry about what is being done to invest and help improve television and film in Africa.
