by Thinus Ferreira
In another embarrassing and inexplicable decision, the SABC has decided to scupper the rebroadcast of the first season of the repositioned SABC3 telenovela The Estate from the SABC1 schedule with the struggling show that will abruptly disappear a month before its end with viewers who've been watching it to catch up seeing no conclusion on SABC1.
The SABC decided to place the struggling S3 telenovela from Clive Morris Productions on SABC1 for a rerun since September 2021 but is now removing it before even having shown the first full first season.
The daft decision of starting a show and ending it without showing the ending comes with no explanation from the SABC, SABC3 or SABC1 about the programming move.
The Estate, struggling in the ratings on S3, will be gone from SABC1 from Monday 7 March when it's suddenly getting replaced by a new telenovela, The Executives from Mondays to Wednesdays.
The Estate - positioned as the replacement of SABC3's cancelled Isidingo that ended in March 2020 - made its debut in April 2021 with disappointing ratings that kept worsening month after month, with the show that will very likely not survive past this year.
The SABC and SABC3 did very little to no publicity before, during and after the debut of The Estate to give it any kind of push for relevance in a crowded TV space with the media covering television that moved on after the broadcaster showed that The Estate isn't an important show to give media attention or coverage to.
In 2021 the crew and cast of The Estate went unpaid for months with several broken promises of payment and with the SABC that said it had "great concern" about the issue.
Clive Morris Productions told cast and crew in late-2021 that their payments can't be made because of "delayed payment from the SABC", but the SABC said that it had paid the company.
While the SABC said that Clive Morris Productions has been fully paid for The Estate, the production company told cast and crew who were last paid in November 2021 that it's because of "delayed payment from the SABC due to the change in contract".
The SABC said that it "can confirm that the corporation has fully paid the production house responsible for The Estate for the season in contract".