With the 13th - thirteenth! - South African Film and Television Awards set for 2 March 2019, the National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF) and Saftas organisers should do something they've never really bothered with.
Having done 12 of these already and now planning a 13th one, it's far too late (but rather late than never) for the NFVF and Saftas organisers to reach out to actual press covering this awards show to hear what it's doing wrong, not doing at all and should be doing, what can be improved, and how.
The NFVF and the Saftas can then implement some of that to turn the annual Saftas fiasco from the self-entitled mess it continues to be, into an actual win-win: for the media covering it, and for the NFVF and the Saftas to get the coverage - and type of coverage - it presumably wants.
There are several long-time entertainment journalists, entertainment editors and veteran TV critics in South Africa who have over years attended overseas awards shows like those in America, Europe and elsewhere - awards shows that are run successfully and have proper media management, PR and marketing tracks running concurrently to the televised ceremony.
They get the press releases and statements without having to ask for it, have access to the press sites and media portals of the Emmys and the Oscars, and are notified about media access and accreditation months in advance.
More importantly, these long-serving media who've been there, done that, all know, and they compare (and they laugh) when they constantly experience the hapless, seemingly clueless and shoddy attempts by local, badly-done award shows like the Saftas.
Viewers just see the televised show, but behind-the-scenes of successful awards shows, runs a parallel "show" - not one for broadcast, but one where the operation is centered around helping the members of the media physically attending it to get access, and to support them to do their jobs to cover the awards show.
While the Saftas, the eye-roll trashy South African Music Awards (Samas), the shockingly-bad Metro FM Awards that imploded in 2018 because of SABC cash problems and didn't even take place, as well as things like the struggling Royalty Soapie Awards, the laughably bad South African Sports Awards and the Africa Magic Viewers' Choice Awards degrade and embarrass the continent and South Africa's TV industry, there are bright sparks.
M-Net's inaugural DStv Mzansi Viewers' Choice Awards last year was excellent - not just the production values and putting up the show - but the way South Africa and Africa's press flown in were treated, the access and the PR machine that ran alongside it.
Mzansi Magic's (DStv 161) 2018 DStv Mzansi Viewers' Choice Awards nominees media announcement event that took place last month, was organised and executed as the very best nominees announcement event for an awards show in South Africa yet - in very stark contrast to the Saftas' trash-bad nominees announcement event earlier this year that gets criticised over and over again without any improvement.
The NFVF's Saftas has been a shoddily run mess for years with literally no improvement in the disorganised and utterly amateurish media handling and PR side of things, or in the low-class production values and mistakes viewers are constantly subjected to on-screen.
From the invites, media accreditation and organising interviews in the months and weeks beforehand, the annually botched nominees announcement event, to the actual nights' red carpet set-up, media room, seats inside the actual awards ceremony, and media liaison during the nights and afterwards and access to whatever panel discussions and engagement there might be, the Saftas has been shockingly subpar, constantly failing at getting the very basics that the media needs, right.
This is not a new problem.
It's been going on for years - meaning that it's so difficult, cumbersome and borderline impossible to comprehensively cover something like the NFVF's Saftas that a lot of media outlets and journalists just don't bother anymore.
As an invited guest, and a media member who was asked to come and cover the Saftas, I wasn't even stunned, surprised or angry getting there and not having a seat.
I went and stood at the back entrance and stood there for the entire duration and covered it from there.
I haven't been back the past two years when the chaos switched to the far-out glitz of Sun City for whatever claptrap-mad reason.
Interestingly, the NFVF and the Saftas has never asked what it needs to do and isn't doing, what needs to change to make it better, or what journalists and the press know from covering awards shows, that the Saftas isn't doing, or is doing wrong.
The result is that the National Film and Video Foundation keeps bungling ahead with the Saftas, year after year - with seemingly the same can't-care-less attitude and not knowing, grating journalists and the media.
Meanwhile the NFVF and Saftas keep losing out on the coverage they want, all because the media isn't getting what they need in order to provide that coverage.
It's unconscionable that the NFVF and Saftas would not ensure that the right, relevant media from across South Africa is present at the awards ceremony to represent their publications and media outlets - yet it happens year after year. As long as, of course, NFVF execs are there, with their family members.
The shocking Comperio Report about the forensic investigation into the rot and corruption at the NFVF from earlier this year, laid bare how NFVF executives and staffers literally took family members on luxury trips to Sun City for the Saftas.
So the NFVF has time and money and the intent to take family, but can't put time and effort into actually focusing on the media as a supposed stakeholder in this awards show.
Do anyone afterwards possibly wonder, like the media and the public, where the actual coverage is? Well, Saftas coverage doesn't appear and happen out of nothing, love.
It's time for the NFVF and Saftas organisers to reach out to the media who know what's going on and how awards show like this is supposed to work - the media part of it - and to ask real questions: What are we doing wrong? What are we not doing? How should the red carpet structure, media room, awards show seating, media logistics and the PR outreach be improved?
What are your information and photography and other needs as media in order to create your coverage of the Saftas? What are other awards shows of the nature of the Saftas doing in their incorporation and accommodation of the media into the event, that we can look into and perhaps add?
Let's hope the NFVF and the Saftas catch some kind of wake-up in not just how to deal with the media, but providing the media with the proper public relations award show support they need to cover the Saftas - in the way it should be covered.
May the 13th South African Film and Television Awards not be a tragic 13 for the media trying to cover it perspective, but a lucky number 13. It is possible, and it can be done.
