by Thinus Ferreira
M-Net is cutting down on its embarrassing Love Island South Africa reality series and is yanking all repeats from the schedule by removing the Saturday omnibus repeat block of the week's episodes in its entirety and is also quietly reducing the originally ordered number of episodes by axing the Sunday episode, Love Island SA: Unseen Bits, completely.
The scaling back of Love Island SA, produced by Rapid Blue, comes after the disastrous debut of the local adaptation of the ITV Studios reality format show this past Sunday on M-Net (Dstv 101).
Love Island South Africa was engulfed in a firestorm of criticism over the lack of diversity in its casting of contestants, as well as a litany of highly embarrassing production gaffes that have continued in playout every episode this week including Friday night's edition when the episode didn't start for several minutes after it was inexplicable stuck on a freeze-frame.
M-Net has already been limiting further exposure of the damaged show, which also lost its main sponsor LottoStar on Tuesday, by blocking the placing on any of the episodes on MultiChoice's DStv Catch Up service with insiders saying the crew is in a "flat spin" and feeling as if they're "living through a nightmare" as they are scrambling to try and attempt fixes and workarounds.
M-Net hasn't responded to any media enquiries, with MultiChoice and its PR firm Aprio that have continued to decline repeated interview requests over the past week to try and talk to M-Net executives and Rapid Blue producers to explain the issues around the show, what went wrong, the casting choices and the causes behind the low production values.
With several questions in media enquiries as yet unanswered, Joanne Botha at Aprio told TVwithThinus to "please refer to the channel’s social media pages".
There M-Net's only comment to date late on Tuesday was a statement card, not issued to the media, saying "We are working tirelessly to fix things".
The glaring production gaffes, extremely unusual for a show on M-Net as DStv's most premium pay-TV channel, continue to inflict daily reputational damage on MultiChoice, ITV Studios, M-Net, Rapid Blue and the Love Island format name as a brand and has been made worse by the lack of any communication with the media and DStv pay-TV subscribers.
After 5 days there's yet to be a virtual press conference from the pay-TV operator's top execs to take questions with no statements yet from Yolisa Phahle as MultiChoice Group CEO for general entertainment, group executive of general entertainment Gideon Khobane, Nkateko Mabaso as group executive of programming, M-Net director Jan du Plessis; or Kaye-Ann Williams as M-Net's head of local productions.
Illegally ripped copies of Love Island SA episodes, including Sunday's mistake-filled debut episode, are available for streaming and download across the internet where they have already presumably been watched thousands of times.
M-Net and MultiChoice this week scrapped and backtracked on a promised new feature called "Early Access" that was introduced by Yolisa Phahle, MultiChoice Group CEO of general entertainment and that would have made the day's Love Island SA episode available for viewing an hour earlier before broadcast on DStv Catch Up.
They are also removing the Saturday repeat omnibus and is cutting down the episodes from 6 to 5 per week by axing Sunday's episode.
M-Net on Friday decided that there will no longer be any repeats of any Love Island SA episodes shown and removed the Saturday omnibus repeat block that would have been a screening of a week's six episodes between 22:00 and 04:30.
On Sundays M-Net is eliminating the week's 6th episode with Love Island SA: Unseen Bits scheduled at 21:55 that is getting culled and replaced with a movie before even a single Unseen Bits episode was ever shown.
The decision to cut back on repeats and dropping a weekly episode is presumably made to limit exposure of the show and its mistakes and to take some pressure off of the production team struggling to cope.
At Rapid Blue, also responsible for The Bachelorette SA currently on M-Net, Love Island SA is overseen by executive producers Adi de Lancey and Duncan Irvine, series producer Abigail Clark, series director Nadia White, and Kim Thwaites as head of production.
