by Thinus Ferreira
In February this year MultiChoice's head of programming, Nomsa Philiso, promised the media ahead of the start of the 18th season of Idols, that MultiChoice and Mzansi Magic's public relations and its communication with the journalists and publications covering the show, will improve.
Nothing came from these promises.
Mzansi Magic had shockingly bad and basically non-existent communications in 2021 around Idols, resulting in less coverage and reporting, fewer articles and much-depleted media engagement. Ratings also tanked.
Nomsa Philiso's promises to improve how MultiChoice and Mzansi Magic communicate with the media about Idols were made at a press briefing held at Urban Brew Studios in Johannesburg in mid-February, where the pay-TV operator and pay-TV channel assured the media that MultiChoice and Mzansi Magic were going to work better when it comes to interacting with the press, and to do more when it comes to communicating about Idols after a bad 2021.
Over the past 8 months, MultiChoice and Mzansi Magic's communication and press relations around the [SIC] Entertainment-produced show however worsened further in 2022.
Mzansi Magic and The Duma Collective PR firm, responsible for publicity and interacting with the press about Idols, engaged even less with the media in 2022 about the show - as viewership for the latest season of Idols on Mzansi Magic nosedived right from its debut, with ratings sinking lower and lower every month.
For the 18th season, the Fremantle-format show fired Randall Abrahams and Unathi Nkayi as judges who were replaced by artist Thembi Seete and rapper-producer JR Bogopa.
Gavin Wratten as director and co-executive producer, along with Anneke de Ridder and ProVerb (Tebogo Thekisho) as co-producers and with ProVerb also being the host, decided as well to bring back Somizi Mhlongo who left after a scandal-engulfed year in 2021.
Idols shed hundreds of thousands of viewers the past few months in an ongoing ratings collapse, with hundreds of thousands of DStv subscribers who have abandoned the Sunday evening show on Mzansi Magic compared to a year ago when ratings also started to plummet from what the show pulled in earlier seasons.
Mzansi Magic didn't respond to a media query made Friday about Idols and questions around the season 18 post-show press conference, if there would be one on Sunday night, and the media's opportunity to pose questions to the winner, runner-up, as well as show and M-Net executives.
Phoned on Sunday, Boitumelo Tsele, a PR specialist at Duma Collective paid by Mzansi Magic to communicate about Idols on behalf of Mzansi Magic and to liaise with media, said she'll call back. She never did.
In February, TVwithThinus at the press briefing asked specifically what happened last year that the media were largely shunned when it came to Idols, about Mzansi Magic's media communications, as well as what the way forward is going to be from M-Net's side following the bad PR and lack of attention to properly communicate with the press around Idols in 2021.
In 2021 Mzansi Magic failed to engage South Africa's national media around the "Hell Week" period as it used to in the past, Mzansi Magic canned the long-running Idols post-show press conference at the end and didn't bother to even do it virtually, while media interaction all through the 17th season was atrociously lacking and was judged the worse it's been in the show's 17th season history.
Making things worse, is that Mzansi Magic couldn't be bothered to tell media that it had decided to dump the communications and press relations interaction that used to happen around Idols in previous years.
Media were left hanging, having to guess - or constantly having to discover belatedly afterwards - that this and that and the post-show media conference for Idols in 2021 wouldn't be taking place.
Besides getting less coverage for Idols season 17 in the media in 2021, Mzansi Magic also unceremoniously dumped the Mzansi Magic Top 12 contestants in-person media briefings it held in the past, and jettisoned regional radio stations and even community media and radio stations that used to be invited to media briefings in Johannesburg.
All of these interactions that used to signal that Idols was important and mattered were scuppered - either due to Mzansi Magic budget cuts, lack of know-how or lack of interest, with the end result that the eventual Idols winner and runner-up of 2021 got less media attention than their counterparts of previous seasons - something which is one of the overall aims of the show.
Fell through the cracks
"There's no doubt that the partnership with the media is important to us. I think with specific reference to last year, I think there were a lot of things that fell through the cracks in terms of the communication process itself," Nomsa Philiso told journalists at the media briefing in February.
"You'll remember that in 2020 we did have a virtual Idols press conference. But yes, something did go off last year," she said.
"You were one of the people who raised it, to say 'What happened?'. So we are deliberately going to make sure that the media is kept abreast, that we walk the path together with the media as we've always done," Nomsa Philiso said.
"For media who got a raw deal last year we apologise, but it's something that we're going to fix."
From bad to worse
Unfortunately Mzansi Magic didn't fix anything as Nomsa Philiso promised would happen.
In 2022, media got even less communication around Idols for the 18th season, with even less interaction and media engagement happening around the show during this past year than in the already diminished 2021 season.
With the season 18 finale of Idols taking place on Sunday, there's again been an abject lack of media engagement and communication throughout the season with the media trying to cover the show.
Between a smattering of sometimes-sent, often-not, press releases and precious little else from the Mzansi Magic and Duma Collective publicists supposed to engage, interact and communicate with the press about the show, media interest in Idols waned further similar to the show's ratings.
After a new Idols winner is announced on Sunday night there will be an in-person, post-show media briefing.
It's predominantly for Johannesburg media only, although around 5 journalists from outside of Johannesburg have been flown to the city, further underscoring how Idols has shrunk in its press engagement from what it used to be and used to do, further marginalising the perception in media's minds that Idols - and covering it - mattered.
Are budget cuts to blame? Is a constant turnover of here-this-month-gone-next-month publicists to blame? Is it a lack of institutional history around proper/past media engagement and what Idols used to do before?
Media outside of Johannesburg have once again been left wondering what's happening with Idols on Sunday, as has been the case throughout this season.
While Idols once again became smaller in stature in 2022 journalists across South Africa have been wondering among themselves the past few months about Idols' future.
As the show has an ongoing struggle to properly communicate with media, Idols is once again ending on Sunday without any heads-up as to what's happening regarding a post-show media briefing.
As Idols season 18 concludes its latest season on Sunday - and if there's a season 19 - it would be even more difficult for Mzansi Magic to try and get media buy-in next year from a press contingent wondering why they should still be devoting any time and effort to cover a show that has not just lost half its audience but apparently its willingness to signal that Idols still matters.
