by Thinus Ferreira
Following its restructuring and acrimonious retrenchment process the SABC has now appointed and allocated just a single publicist responsible for liaising with media and who must do publicity for SABC1, SABC2 and SABC3 combined.
Meanwhile members of South Africa's media maintain their stance from months ago and who warned that it won't be practically workable, again saying that the new "structure" is going to inflict massive damage on the broadcaster's overall aim of maintaining and growing exposure for its TV programming going forward.
As part of its retrenchment process in which 621 staffers lost their jobs at the South African public broadcaster at the end of March, the SABC tore up its decades-old structure for publicity and marketing of its TV content and unilaterally swept away its entire existing corps of allocated publicists working at SABC1, SABC2 and SABC3.
In several cases, as longtime SABC publicists exited at the end of March, so did their specialised media contact lists as well as their established network connections with media and transactional relationships and influence.
According to SABC insiders, one chosen publicist from SABC1 who would have been kept on, declined the job and she moved elsewhere.
The public broadcaster has now appointed Caroline Phalakatshela to handle all media enquiries and the entire publicity portfolio for SABC1, SABC2 and SABC3 with her job title that is now PR specialist.
Caroline Phalakatshela, a longtime SABC2 publicist, has now been saddled with the basically impossible task of doing publicity work and handling all media enquiries, schedules, programming information, updates, publicity photography, show synopses and press kits for all of the programming on SABC1, SABC2 and SABC3.
This includes the entire collection of locally-produced TV soaps and telenovelas across all 3 channels - 7 in all.
SABC brand managers will also be expected to help with publicity, although their job is to look after each channel's brand management and brand campaign executions.
It's not clear how Gugu Ntuli, who heads up the SABC's corporate communications division, or Merlin Naicker, the SABC's latest head of SABC Television, decided that just one specialist publicist for SABC1, SABC2 and SABC3 is workable, practical, or doable, or how just one publicist is adequate for this gargantuan task.
The SABC decided that the jobs of individual publicists for SABC1, SABC2 and SABC3 are redundant and their jobs were all scrapped in the structure proposed and devised by Gugu Ntuli and Merlin Naicker.
For decades the SABC has had specialised and allocated publicists working on SABC1 and that channel's properties, for SABC2 and its content, and for SABC3 and that channel's shows.
Over the past decades, all three channels at times outsourced and appointed external PR companies to rep the channels in addition to the permanent channel-allocated SABC publicists.
Over decades various PR companies have also been paid to work on specific soaps, or shows for SABC1, SABC2 and SABC3 and helped with organising quarterly previews and press screening events when the SABC still bothered to preview content to the media and advertisers.
The SABC channels over the years all employed at least two or more publicists for the workload, with divisions headed up by a publicity managers well - except for SABC3 that in the end made do with just a single publicist who now also lost her job.
Now Caroline Phalakatshela - as well as brand managers who might as well balk at the added publicity responsibilities suddenly folded into their new job descriptions - are responsible for what a lot more people did until now.
In December TVwithThinus asked the SABC why it wants to completely axe all publicists at all of its TV channels and why the SABC no longer sees this crucial job as important.
South Africa's media, who depends on SABC publicists as the go-between for interviews, media enquiries and the latest programming information, however disagrees that "the right structures" are now in effect.
After media previously described what's going to happen and what has now, in fact, happend as a "wholesale burndown", the South African press continue to say that the SABC has been extremely "short-sighted" and "arrogantly clueless" to get rid of all SABC TV channels' publicists in its retrenchment plan.
"Don't know what Gugu's thinking. We got no communication [before], or even now as to what's happening or how things are changing. I suppose just less SABC stuff going on the pages. We already get so little," an editor told TVwithThinus this week, whose publication includes SABC programming and TV listing and who relies on publicists to "send us stuff and to know who to send it to by what deadlines".
A longtime senior publicist working at a PR company with decades-long experience with how the SABC's PR divisions used to operate said about the axing of the swathe of PR people at the SABC that "this was a big mistake".
"It doesn't seem as if the people responsible for it had the remotest of ideas what the PR programming function entails, why its crucial or what these people actually really did".
"It's thankless and often-unseen work but you only start to notice it when it's gone and these gaping black holes appear where your content used to be and got exposure," said the person.
This person also warned: "Competitors and competing brands with the SABC and their shows are all too happy to flood in to fill the void andto take up the space in the media attention that media gave to them [SABC]".
Another independent publicist weighed in and said about the SABC's move: "It seems non-sensical but a lot that's been happening at the SABC over many years just don't make logical sense."
"They just tried to save money by letting of people. But they don't seem to understand what the term 'earned media' means or maybe never google-ed it to understand about the value of the hundreds of thousands of rands that the SABC gets in brand awareness, when something about a SABC show appears in ex-SABC media. It's something that far outweighs publicists' salaries."
"That article or clip in a newspaper or online, or that soundbyte or show listing about any SABC programming is worth gold and they don't seem to understand that publicists at their channels are the worker ants pushing that to the media."
"Now media will rely even more on what they receive from e.tv or MultiChoice from their DStv channels and stuff if they don't get what they need in time from the SABC."
