by Thinus Ferreira
More questions are raised by media - this time about the behaviour of the media themselves - following MultiChoice's Dubai Expo 2020 excursion, where press from South Africa, flown to Dubai business class, were once again apparently more eager to share social media photos of their boat parties, afterparties and snaps from the Burj Khalifa's 148th floor, than working and providing real-time coverage of the TV industry and about MultiChoice's content shared there.
MultiChoice already perplexed swathes of the South African press corps covering television with the pay-TV operator's bizarre exercise last week of doing a "viewing" and panel session in Dubai of the upcoming locally-produced series Blood Psalms.
Blood Psalms will debut on MultiChoice's Showmax video streaming service in February 2022.
Many in the media, meanwhile, have been shaking their heads at MultiChoice's apparently uninformed and opportunistic content land grab.
Members of the media, talking among themselves, continue to discuss MultiChoice odd behaviour and perplexing Dubai modus operandi when it comes to media management.
They are wondering why MultiChoice chose to dilute and deliberately diminish the press value of a piece of presumably premium new content by ripping off the packaging and doing a media debut for Blood Psalms in Dubai - first - without showing its so-called "homegrown content" to South African media before taking it overseas.
"Imagine ITV doing a debut and panel sesh of something like Downton Abbey, in Dubai of all places just because that's what it has in the kitty, before razzmatazzing it in front of UK press first. You want to snicker at MultiChoice's lack of reading the room but it's just sad really. Unforced error," said a longtime South African journalist covering film and TV.
"Obviously MultiChoice can't and won't dazzle Dubai with Moja Love's Uyajola 9/9 as a showcase of South African TV talent so they sacrificed something prematurely they should have kept since Blood Psalms is maybe all that's new they perhaps have."
Now questions are also swirling inside South Africa's media circles around the media's participation itself and their work there - or lack of - in properly covering the dabblings of MultiChoice at the Dubai Expo 2020 excursion.
Media who went, couldn't bother with creating any substantive number of thought pieces, original articles, interviews and stories that got traction about MultiChoice and its content.
You'd search in vain, for instance, for any interviews with the producers or those behind-the-scenes putting together MultiChoice's 1NightWithMzansi concert in the Dubai Opera House before it aired, to help promote it.
(The TV variety special on MultiChoice and M-Net's 1Magic (DStv 103) channel then proved to be quite a let-down).
The media were however quick to post photos on social media immediately about the 1NightWithMzansi afterparty, clubbing the night away.
Add in the pool pics, the obligatory flute glass and seafood lunch snappies, and MultiChoice's Dubai Expo 2020 media junket turned into the journalist's life to die for, darling.
It's sadly strongly reminiscent of MultiChoice's disappointing and haphazardly organised Digital Dialogue Conference in Dubai for which MultiChoice also flew an oddly-chosen group of media from across sub-Saharan Africa to Dubai in May 2018.
The results were spectacular. But in a very bad way.
Instead of actually reporting what the experts said at MultiChoice's Digital Dialogue Conference - doing interviews, delivering comprehensive on-the-ground coverage and providing analysis - the invited "media" from Africa were apparently star-struck, lazy and caught up in the moment instead of focusing on doing the work of reporting.
The media MultiChoice invited to Dubai in 2018, focused almost solely on showing off their temporary new lux-lifestyle lives than of doing and posting any actual work.
They were much more intent on capturing and sharing the perfect photos of their camel rides in the Dubai desert, posting photos of falcons and falconer show-and-tell interactions, and even walking around in gilded Dubai shopping malls, varnished with faux gold where they would snap garish photos of McDonalds.
Three years later in 2021 - and perhaps having learnt nothing or having lost the institutionalised memory after the exit of its previous publicists' corps - MultiChoice went back to the same playbook, apparently for more of the same media-lame, coverage-tame results.
"If you see media boasting and posting about flying business class to Dubai before they've even started reporting on anything about a company, that's problematic," says an editor who comments anonymously since the person, like other media, have an ongoing media relationship with MultiChoice.
"It speaks to the caliber and what the level of media maturity is of those invited."
The person cautioned that companies generally should do better homework and do the best media planning possible to guard against "the type of unoriginal, pandering content you're probably going to get - if any - from an influencer or media worker from a sponsored trip" if there isn't clearly-defined rules and an agreement on expectations and media coverage from both sides beforehand.
A veteran videographer, journalist and social media raconteur who've long attended MultiChoice's media events in the past, told me this week about MultiChoice's Dubai media jaunt: "Like the crowing of Miss South Africa 2021, very few people realised that MultiChoice hosted a 'content showcase' of the locally-produced and filmed Blood Psalms".
"Social media persons and publications that normally crack the invite and collectively post to 'trend' this type of spectacular, seemed no longer worthy. Sad but true the new brooms did not seem to value their hosts. All they did was post about themselves 'living their best life', not even hashtagging their hosts who had carted them to Dubai. Event? What event? Claps twice!!"
Says a journalist who is also a media and journalism lecturer: "It remains the prerogative of MultiChoice and M-Net as to what media, and who, they invite to cover DStv content activations and media events. One wonders how MultiChoice compiled a likely ROI of earned media coverage and reach".
"Access media should provide more, and much broader, coverage of your media event than media you're just sending the generic press release. Do they [MultiChoice] really get their money's worth?"
"If there isn't a lot of original reporting about your brand from media or influencers at your event, something's wrong. Then you need a recalibration of your strategy. It doesn't seem as if MultiChoice got what it could have if they had corralled and managed the correct access media correctly."
