The Chinese pay-TV operator StarTimes has once again scooped up a gaggle of Africa reporters for a propaganda-like trip to China while ignoring South Africa's press.
Meanwhile StarSat, StarTimes' affiliate in South Africa, is
marking a whole year of doing literally nothing in terms of any programming publicity that is supposed to be sent to media.
In the past week, StarTimes took 51 Africa journalists from 25 African countries - the bulk of whom will end up doing absolutely nothing and no actual reporting about it - for an "educational" 10-day tour to the People's Republic of China as part of a so-called "enriching relationships" junket.
After several days, there's literally been
just one story - probably not the return of investment StarTimes wants. On the other hand, it could also be that getting actual press coverage for this isn't the actual aim.
Interestingly StarTimes couldn't be bothered with South Africa, where StarTimes South Africa and On Digital Media (ODM) run the StarSat satellite pay-TV platform.
StarTimes decided to take the African journalists to Beijing and Guangzhou in China for a media tour to interestingly co-incide with the 19th Congress of the Communist Party of China that started on 19 October and lasts for a week.
The African journalists toured the StarTimes Media headquarters in Beijing on Monday.
Also on the itinerary - besides the 19th Congress of the Communist Party of China taking place in Beijing - are visits to an industrial fair, a technological park, a textile park, port, agricultural park and a agricultural equipment manufacturing plant.
How bad is StarTimes' media liaison? This bad:
Guo Ziqi, StarTimes vice president at the StarTimes Media headquarters spoke about StarTimes' investment in pay-TV in Africa.
TVwithThinus asked
Luke Liu, handling StarTimes overseas public relations, for a transcript or statement of what she said, but was told there is none.
Gao Wenzhi, another StarTimes vice president, spoke about StarTimes' research, StarTimes' content security and StarTimes' future development slate.
Again,
TVwithThinus that asked
Luke Lui for a transcript or statement of what
Gao Wenzhi said - was told there is nothing StarTimes can share.
Luke Liu said that
Guo Ziqi and
Gao Wenzhi answered questions from African media and that "there is no transcript or press release".
How media covering StarTimes is supposed to report on what StarTimes executives are saying and doing when they do so publicly, is anybody's guess.
Luke Lui says "StarTimes is a Chinese company and a leading digital TV operator in Africa at the same time. We are very glad to be a bridge between China and Africa with promoting exchanges of the two sides".
A year of StarSat doing no programming publicity...
... and counting
Meanwhile October marks an infamous first anniversary for StarSat that
stopped providing South Africa's media with any programming publicity material, monthly programming and scheduling and channel updates since October 2016.
South African media can't report about StarSat's month-to-month and day-to-day content or specific channel highlights because they literally don't know what it is due to a lack of information.
StarSat doesn't have any publicist or PR people communicating anything regarding any general content on StarSat - either about self-packaged or third-party channels, or specific shows or programming - to the South African press.
StarSat is trying to make inroads in growing its StarSat subscriber base but isn't communicating to the media what the content, channels and shows worth watching are that are available on its pay-TV platform.
Of course ordinary viewers and consumers don't buy decoders - they buy an experience and entertainment.
That's the reason why it's important - in fact crucial - for a pay-TV operator to issue programming publicity material to the press.
Yet, for 12 months now and counting, StarSat has failed to do the most basic communication in terms of programming - information that StarSat gets anyway on a monthly and weekly basis from overseas third-party channel providers, but doesn't bother or care to issue to the local media.
You don't see StarSat programming highlights in the newspaper and magazine that you read if it carries TV listing pages, and that is the reason why.
StarSat - formerly TopTV - used to have both in-house publicists (plural), and also paid external PR companies and PR people that it cycled through, to do this work.
For a year now it's not being done, after all of the TopTV and then StarSat publicists exited until only one was left; and after one PR company's contract was ended and a single external publicist got the task until her contract was also unceremoniously axed.
Without even a goodbye or advisory to media, emails suddenly bounced back this week a year ago in October 2016 with an "unfortunately I am no longer contracted to StarTimes Media SA".
And that was the end.
At this point in time it's anybody's guess what exactly StarTimes Media SA and ODM's media strategy is for StarSat as far as its basic programming communications strategy with journalists and the press covering StarSat and television in South Africa is concerned.
StarSat doesn't care about having, or building and strengthening, media relations with South Africa's press and TV critics or it would have employed a publicist or publicists months ago - or would have made an effort to put a PR company on retainer to communicate its programming on its behalf.
If it were important for StarSat to have the South African TV industry know what it's doing, and its programming, it would have appointed South African publicists months ago.
Instead, nothing.
If it were important for StarSat to educate the South African press about what it is and what it's doing, it would have made an effort to include South African journalists in things like the current StarTimes Media educational to Beijing for African journalists - or at the very least have reams of press releases and information about it on hand and available to send out.
Not communicating properly, not having a point-person or people in the form of publicist, and in effect shunning South Africa's press isn't having no effect - it's having a continued detrimental effect on StarSat.
Beyond being disappointing to the media trying to cover StarSat and its programming, it's practically damaging as well.
StarSat is damaging it brand but the press also isn't able to effectively do their work - telling potential viewers what there is on StarSat's various channels that's worth watching.
The press doesn't think highly of StarSat and that's a PR and perception problem.
In fact journalists - beyond not really knowing what StarSat is and what it's doing and showing - doesn't quite know
what to think of StarSat, and that's bad if you're selling a service that even the media covering it, is unsure, skeptical and uninformed about.
Of course TV critics and journalists would rather write about StarSat's actual programming instead of ruminating about what a satellite pay-TV service is
not doing, but in the absence of any actual programming info push, it is what's left.
Last month in parliament one of the then SABC board candidates and now a SABC board member, (still) referred to StarSat as TopTV -
4 years after and since it had changed its name.
It's just one example of how uninformed the general South African public is about StarSat.
That is StarSat's executives fault for not seeing PR and programmatic communication to the media as absolutely crucial to its existence, growth and brand image.
South Africa's consumer market, TV industry, media and trade press are much more evolved that the rest of Africa.
That makes real, effective, relevant and constant communication from a company to the media extremely important.
This past week, Netflix South Africa over 2 days communicated more with South Africa's media covering television than what StarSat had over the past 2 years.
Why should potential and existing StarSat subscribers remain or sign up for the service if they see nothing about StarSat and its programming in the press?
If StarTimes can afford to take over 50 journalists - who are likely not going to report to the public what StarTimes wants to communicate - to Bejing for 10 days, then StarTimes Media and StarSat can afford to pay to have a South African publicist communicating about its programming.
Sadly that realisation seems not have dawned yet on StarSat and its Beijing-based parent StarTimes Media.
