by Thinus Ferreira
It's the best analogy I could think of to describe my feelings and everything I felt today, so here goes: In Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith there's a scene where the Stormtroopers, after Order 66 turn on the Jedi, ambush and kill them.
Grandmaster Yoda could feel the death, the anguish - the lives extinguished across the galaxy, as he dropped his walking stick, put his hand on his heart, touched his head and sank to his knees. The devastation was too much to bear.
If you know the scene, you'll know immediately what I'm talking about. Sometimes you have a moment where you can just sense the terribleness of something without a word that needs to be said.
On Tuesday the Caxton group, through the board of directors of Caxton & CTP Publishers & Printers, announced that it's the end for its print magazines Bona, Country Life, Essentials, Food & Home, Garden & Home, People SA, Rooi Rose, Vrouekeur, Woman & Home and Your Family.
Another 150 people in its magazine division suddenly out of jobs in South Africa because of the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic sweeping the country and the world.
Caxton said it will try to "accommodate" - meaning to keep printing- Living & Loving and Farmer's Weekly. It will presumably also try and find other publishers to take over the titles although it's highly unlikely.
To be clear: The Caxton print implosion wasn't brought on by Covid-19 but the virus was these magazines' coup de grâce.
The board said that the magazines shutting down is due to the "steady and continuous" reduction in advertising spending in the media sector". Covid-19 coupled with "already difficult trading conditions for magazine publishers" made the final decision unavoidable in terms of shutting all of these titles down.
Caxton's shock follows after last week's shock when Associated Media Publishing (AMP) announced that it's abruptly shutting down, ending Cosmpolitan, House & Leisure, Good Housekeeping and its Afrikaans version Goeie Huishouding.
This is 14, possibly 16, magazines that each took up shelf space at your local shop, bookseller and supermarket ... gone.
Firstly, my thoughts are with these magazine workers. Over many years as a journalist I have written and contributed articles for some of these magazines and others in their stables long gone already.
Al lot of these publications also had journalists - writers, editors, and even online whiz kids - who would travel as part of the press pack from Cape Town, Port Elizabeth, Durban and elsewhere to mostly Johannesburg to attend media junkets, press previews, launches, upfront presentations and all kinds of media events of various TV channels and TV shows.
Over the years many would come, and many would go, and several I got to know over many years.
I would end up sitting next to or opposite someone at a same table - or I would end up standing next to someone with a drink in hand as we did breakfasts, brunches, lunches or dinners, often sharing gossip, thoughts on the latest news or entertainment biz scandal, or just chatting and catching up among ourselves as members of the press.
Almost always when we're together as a press gaggle because we have been invited by publicists and PR companies to press conferences where we would ask questions, or would do roundtable interviews with local and international TV stars.
Over the last few years some influencers, bloggers and other new media have been added into the cooky-crazy eclectic mix that makes up and represents South Africa's press pool covering TV.
But today, after the printing presses on these magazines' Saddle Stitch and Perfect Bind printing runs are switched off, the South African press group covering the TV world will be smaller.
It's incredibly sad.
What's worse than the feeling which is already horrible, is that beyond the emotion and sentiment of it all, is that it is also terribly bad for South Africa's TV industry itself (and dare I even say it, the PR industry).
Magazines - especially print magazines - do an incredible job in aiding content discovery.
They carry TV schedules, they have TV listings, programme highlights, they have glossy covers with TV stars, interviews with TV stars, articles about TV shows, and gossip about celebrities.
Magazines help readers -who are also viewers as multi-media consumers - to discover a new show or a new personality by being exposed to them. A reader will very often tune in to now watch something they didn't know was on TV or didn't know the starting date or time of, because they have now read about it.
Whenever the world returns to whatever the "new normal" will be, the press conferences, round table interviews, TV upfronts, and the theatre seats inside preview screenings will be smaller and emptier.
There will be less stories about TV shows and TV stars that appear in print, and less different articles.
There will be less print places where the SABC, e.tv, and channel collection providers like M-Net, Mzansi Magic, kykNET, BBC Studios, NBCUniversal, Discovery, FOX, Disney and all the others carried on MultiChoice's DStv can get those beautiful double page spread feature articles, profile pieces and interviews about their shows and on-air personalities.
There will also be less chance for ordinary people in South Africa to read about and to discover new shows on TV.
In other words, the magazine closures will indirectly have a very negative impact on content discovery - something that in turn, almost imperceptibly, can impact TV ratings through boosting interest in a specific show or person for instance.
And the PR people? Well, less available press, less titles and less physical bodies in the press corps mean smaller attendance at media gatherings and a room at an event that looks (everything's always about how it looks) "less full" for the client.
Although not a real indicator, a lot of clients still (eye-roll) measure "success" of an event by how many warm press bodies that a fatigued publicist could pull into a room, instead of focusing on the earned media during and afterwards an event instead of attendance.
With less members of the media covering television, there will be even less questions - and less availability of potential coverage in print pages.
In as much as TV is its own medium, print and magazines have a very symbiotic and mutually beneficial media relationship with television.
Because of Covid-19 yet another precious chunk of that media ecosystem in South Africa is now gone.
