by Thinus Ferreira
NBCUniversal International Networks doesn't want to comment or explain why DStv subscribers in South Africa and across the African continent are made to watch any of its supposedly pre-show E! Live from the Red Carpet as belated afterthought programming.
While still calling it E! Live from the Red Carpet on its schedules, NBCUniversal International Networks for quite a while now no longer has its E! Live from the Red Carpet coverage from various Hollywood award shows either live, or showing it on E! (DStv 124) for Africa before awards shows.
What exactly is the purpose of watching people doing arrival interviews pre-show or pre-game, when it's only shown long afterwards "post-game", when even the winners have been reported, the awards shown has been seen, and social media had its wave of clips?
On Monday 3 February - long after the 2025 Grammy Awards was already shown live from Los Angeles - the South African PR company of NBCUniversal International Networks sent out a press release to inform the media that "E! Live from the Red Carpet: The 2025 Grammy Awards, E!'s signature red carpet coverage from this weekend's Grammys will air on E! tonight at 19:00".
Of course the press release for this E! programming was far too late and wholly irrelevant to any 2025 Grammy coverage that had already been done days before and during the weekend.
Yet E! also had no problem in trying to tell South African media, which it apparently wanted to tell DStv subscribers in turn, to watch something called "live" that was already old, stale and definitely not live.
On Monday last week, TVwithThinus asked NBCUniversal International Networks, through a media query made through the PR agency, why the E! Live from the Red Carpet shows are no longer shown live.
A week later and after waiting seven days there's been no response from NBCUniversal International Networks.
It's of course not just the Grammy Awards where NBCUniversal International Networks decided to foist off a live pre-show on E! thatis only shown days later as recorded after-filler to DStv viewers.
It happened - and happens - with all of the other award shows as well - like last month's supposed E! Live from the Red Carpet for the Golden Globe Awards which was also first shown on E! the Monday evening after, and September's 76th Primetime Emmy Awards where E!'s awful pre-becomes-post programming embarrassment was also very, very obvious.
The regression of NBCUniversal International Networks to no longer showing E! Live from the Red Carpet as actually "live" is sadly not happening as something on its own.
It is taking place alongside the broader zombification trend of the programming of pay-TV channels of which E! is one.
The dilution of the characters and content of channels like E! is sad to see.
Besides a constantly reduced offering of what signature programming there used to be on channels like E! to bring viewers like MultiChoice's DStv subscribers there, the little signature programming that remains are further mangled like E! Live from the Red Carpet not even shown live.
Either NBCUniversal International Networks thinks South African and African viewers no longer care, won't notice, never cared or that it isn't important.
Or possibly NBCU made the calculation that it's no longer worth going through the trouble to get and schedule E! Live from the Red Carpet as an actual LIVE programming event.
In terms of programming, E! Live from the Red Carpet used to be a part of E!'s competitive advantage. Dstv subscribers interested in watching an awards show - already predisposed to the content - tuned to E! first before switching to watch the actual awards show.
In a sense able to capitalise on what's called a "captive audience", E! got viewers who watched E! first because they planned on watching something else just after it. Now it's destroyed.
After waiting a week for comment and ignoring it, NBCUniversal International Networks obviously didn't think it was important enough an issue to give any kind of a media response and further indicative of the sad indifference.
