by Thinus Ferreira
The silence from MultiChoice and M-Net (DStv 101) over Love Island South Africa and the pay-TV operator's refusal after a week to give any facts or explanations as to what happened and how it got the diversity casting wrong - as well as the cause of the ongoing production gaffes - are making the scandal worse, while people now just want to watch it to see how bad it is.
So says the respected PR expert, Anne Dolinschek, founder of nflu#ntial that is a strategic consultancy firm in Sandton, Johannesburg that focuses on developing influencer marketing strategies for brands.
Love Island South Africa, a local adaptation of the ITV Studios format produced by Rapid Blue, remains mired in scandal after it was engulfed in a firestorm of criticism since its debut last Sunday.
DStv subscribers have been up in arms 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 last week including Friday night's edition when the episode didn't start for several minutes after it was inexplicable stuck on a freeze-frame.
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.
M-Net has already been limiting further exposure of the damaged show, which also lost its main sponsor LottoStar on Tuesday last week, by blocking the placing on any of the episodes on MultiChoice's DStv Catch Up service.
Meanwhile insiders said that 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 also pulled the plug on all Love Island South Africa repeats and reduced the original episode order by axing the Love Island SA Unseen Bits episode on Sunday.
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 last week also 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.
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.
A week after the debut of Love Island SA there's yet to be a virtual press conference from the pay-TV operator's top execs to take questions.
There have been 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, who don't appear to want their names attached to anything to do with the mess around Love Island South Africa.
Asked what MultiChoice and M-Net did wrong in communicating about Love Island SA when viewers started noticing and talking about the lack of diversity and the production problems and mistakes, Anne Dolinschek says "the moment they started seeing these negative comments and people literally mocking Love Island SA and making fun of it - literally people now just want to watch it to see how bad it is - the first thing that they should have done was to get ahead of the game and to take ownership of it and to say 'we know that there are issues'."
"People also asked 'Why are they not communicating with us?' and 'What's happening?'."
"I think it would have been very beneficial to them to just put out facts - maybe not all of them - to just own it and say 'Yes, we're having technical issues, we are working on it within the next 3 episodes, you'll see it and by then Love Island SA will be fine'."
"It's literally just giving facts to the consumers or viewers so that they're in the loop, because the more that they know the less they will speculate and the less they will actually cause havoc with a brand," says Anne Dolinschek.
About MultiChoice and M-Net's unwillingness to talk to the media, Anne Dolinschek says "I get where they're coming from - they obviously want to try and minimise the fallout - but the fact is if you're not giving journalists information they're going to speculate and it's going to get worse, right?"
"So the minute they saw something had gone wrong they should have sent out a press release immediately to at least the entertainment media just to give them the facts."
"Even if it wasn't a formal press conference they should just have issued some sort of statement so that the media have the facts and are not speculating and not putting up what people are saying on Twitter - because that's literally what's happening - and saying here are the facts, we will keep you updated. That is what they should do and they're just not," she says.
How does South Africa compare when it comes to professional crisis communication and brands and companies being able to very quickly jump in with a best practice and responsive communication approach around an unfolding crisis?
Anne Dolinschek says that "there's nothing wrong with South Africa and our standards as far as this is concerned. We have amazing crisis communications specialists in South Africa and PR agencies who take care of that."
"I don't know where the disconnect is sometimes. From a PR perspective, we've got amazing experts in South Africa."
Anne Dolinschek who is also a Love Island fan, when asked what she would like to see happen, says "unfortunately I didn't get to see any of Love Island South Africa because I was trying to get it on DStv Catch Up but I'm definitely a fan of the international one."
"I definitely want them to follow the international recipe, but definitely obviously following it with a South African flavour and definitely with a recipe that we want to see. I'm just looking forward to the drama in the house - that's always what keeps people going back for more, right?"
