by Thinus Ferreira
MultiChoice late on Monday opted for an attempt at damage control instead of honest conversations and blocked the media from talking to M-Net and Rapid Blue executives following the trainwreck debut of the Love Island SA reality show on the pay-TV channel.
It follows after Sunday night's disastrous and jarring premiere on M-Net (DStv 101) of South Africa's local adaptation of the buzzy ITV Studios format that was technical TV flop.
Love Island SA ignited a firestorm of criticism under DStv subscribers across sub-Saharan Africa, as well as internationally, for its lack of diversity in casting and a litany of on-air mistakes.
MultiChoice never posted the flawed first episode of Love Island South Africa to its DStv Catch Up service after Sunday night's debut with the Love Island SA placeholder tile on DStv Catch Up that was also quietly removed on Monday. Only episode 2 is available since Tuesday morning.
On its placeholder block Love Island SA on DStv Catch on Sunday night and Monday said that "Our team is working on getting the South African edition of the global reality TV sensation Love Island that is full of drama to you as soon as possible. Episode will be available will be loaded soon".
DStv subscribers and TV critics called out the poor Love Island SA production values - ranging from sound and editing to the music, the voice-over narration, cinematography and the uninspiring bungalow vineyard-set dormitory that the show calls a villa.
Meanwhile, international reports about Love Island SA ranging from the BBC to CNN and in multiple foreign newspapers on Monday continue to inflict damage on the entirety of South Africa's struggling film and TV industry.
M-Net on Monday didn't respond directly to media enquiries and later MultiChoice, through its PR company Aprio, rebuffed repeated requests in a media enquiry to talk to M-Net executives in charge as well as to the Rapid Blue production company executives and producers responsible for the making of Love Island SA.
Following further very evident production problems and mistakes during Monday night's second episode of Love Island SA complete with a timer before and after commercials, it has been two days with still no answers from M-Net, MultiChoice or Rapid Blue as to the cause and reasons behind the show's oddly amateurish look.
The pay-TV conglomerate was asked whether Sunday's episode is what M-Net and the producers intended to shown pay-TV subscribers, why the show is plagued by sound, editing, lighting, and camera problems, if M-Net has any comment regarding the casting of the show, and whether any production crew changes are being made.
There's also ongoing silence around questions posed about whether M-Net possibly didn't give Rapid Blue - also busy with the first season of The Bachelorette SA for M-Net - a big enough budget and support, or whether the issues with the show's production values are not related to budgetary problems but with not having enough staff working on the series that runs 24 hours per day.
On Monday evening, skirting repeated requests for interviews and not answering any of these questions, Aprio issued a terse statement on behalf of MultiChoice saying that "We pride ourselves in reflecting diversity and inclusion for all our shows, including Love Island".
"The many channels and thousands of program [sic] hours we produce are testament to this. Viewers can be assured that this will become more apparent in future episodes of Love Island SA."
"We hope
viewers will keep watching to enjoy the new stars of the show who will be
arriving over the next few days. We understand viewers’ disappointment in
relation to the production quality and would like to apologize for the
technical issues experienced yesterday and are working really hard to resolve
them."
While MultiChoice belatedly went into damage control on behalf of M-Net instead of making executives available to openly speak about the show, its controversial casting choices and subpar production values, viewers started fuelling all kinds of rumours on social media.
In the absence of responses about what went wrong with M-Net's heavy-hyped Love Island SA that didn't meet expectations and with viewers searching for answers, multiple online conspiracy theorists - all claiming to know people working on the show - emerged on Monday who fuelled all kinds of unverified conspiracy theories.
These unfounded claims ranged from a power outage that would have hit the show and prevented the upload of the proper episode, that the episode was supposedly a draft and early edited version that was broadcast, and that some of the Love Island crew are upset and threatening to walk off the show.
None of these the Randburg-based pay-TV operator came out to rebuff in public, further harming the show's reputation.
Insiders told TVwithThinus on Monday, after a day into the PR crisis, that Rapid Blue and the Love Island SA crew are well aware of how DStv subscribers and the rest of the world received and perceived the show that switched to crisis mode and is "furiously sifting" through new applications and possible new casting options, with the decision to keep the application process open during the course of the show that had been taken before Sunday's debut.
According to insiders the public reaction to the Love Island SA casting of the debut group of 10 Islanders was "unfortunate" with sources saying that "of course the composition of those taking part would have and will be changing over time".
"Dumpster fire"
South African TV producers - with one describing the reality show as a "dumpster fire" - said that its bad quality is damaging the reputation of the country's TV industry.
Producers said that while they're still battling the impact of Covid-19 that the Love Island SA mess is inflicting collective damage on the industry and that Rapid Blue needs to do better since the attention on the show's bad production values is hurting South Africa's international credibility to make international series.
