This past week M-Net's Afrikaans channel kykNET (DStv 144) had a "screening" of its
upcoming new supernatural horror Afrikaans drama series Die Spreeus (
The Starlings) starting on MultiChoice's DStv satellite service.
Unfortunately (and quite unprofessionally), kykNET apparently couldn't bother to tell the press - who are presumably kykNET stakeholders - that it would be happening beforehand, or send a physical or digital screener.
Nor did kykNET bother with any effort afterwards to issue information about it, what happened, or what was said at
Die Spreeus screening. There were no photos, and likewise no information afterwards to those who attended, or any information sent to those who were not invited and not told that it would be taking place.
So now what? Everybody sitting back and waiting for the avalanche of coverage of the Marche Media produced series with director
Jaco Bouwer? For the effusive praise? The photo stories? The profile interviews, or the set visit and on-location articles from when media visited the Cape Town filmed show while it was in production?
Naturally, none of that will happen.
kykNET's decrepit effort around
Die Spreeus ironically comes in the same week that
HBO held a red carpet event and preview screening for the press in New York of the upcoming 8th and final season of
Game of Thrones that will start on 15 April on M-Net (DStv 101).
Compared to kykNET's dismal non-communication with
Die Spreeus, the South African media covering television half a world away, ironically knew in advance that HBO would do a screening of
Game of Thrones on Thursday evening at Radio City music hall. HBO communicated it.
In contrast, in South Africa, this TV critic and other journalists had to - by chance - notice a tweet on social media afterwards from the actress
Monique Rockman who appear in
Die Spreeus, that there was a media screening for the show that is not just coming to kykNET but also MultiChoice's subscription video-on-demand service Showmax (who knew?).
Of course it wasn't possible for South African press to actually see
Game of Thrones, but the amount of information and even high-resolution red carpet and event photos shared immediately afterwards by HBO with the media - although on the other side of the world - pales in comparison with kykNET's "do nothing, can't care less" approach with
Die Spreeus.
No. It's not necessary for kykNET to be like HBO, and neither I nor other scribes covering television have any expectation that kykNET should be as responsive or as pro-active as an American pay-TV channel with a global show like
Game of Thrones.
Yet kykNET is not doing even the bare basics for a drama series that it invested in and paid money for and to bring it properly under potential viewers attention. For that there is no excuse.
Surely kykNET can and should be doing much, much better in working with and involving the South African press when it comes to rolling out, promoting and publicising its content.
Obviously, kykNET's approach of doing less rather than more when it comes to promoting its new programming under the South African media - apparently sublimely content with operating in a self-made bubble world of its own making - is working for it. That's the reason why M-Net's Afrikaans division keeps doing it (which is to say, not much).
It's a strategy that's unfathomable.
What exactly is the coverage that kykNET now expects for Marche Media's
Die Spreeus? And what exactly did kykNET do in engaging and helping the media to achieve that?
A worrying concern is that several international TV channels, video streaming services and global broadcasters that are active and nowadays producing shows in South Africa are way more responsive and dynamic with their communication and PR with the local press covering television.
The past few months I and other journalists have done several set visits to international TV shows filming in Cape Town, that would include round-table interviews with their casts.
When these shows are ready for broadcast on some of the channels on MultiChoice's DStv and elsewhere, these channels and broadcasters again invite the press to a screening of the shows or send digital screeners.
It's something that simply doesn't happen, or happens haphazardly with local shows (that could do with and deserve attention).
It highlights the lack of an actual consistent PR policy at channels like kykNET as to how it involves the media to help in marketing and publicity efforts for its content.
During the same period,
one show filming in Cape Town for a local singing reality series invited media to come watch during recording. The difference couldn't be more stark.
South African TV channels and their shows are quietly, yet massively, being leapfrogged in their own country in "best practice publicity".
It's happening because they neither care, nor know, nor ask, nor upskill themselves in terms of what others are doing.
They don't know and don't care to find out how their competitors are engaging and communicating with the media in a much better, much more consistent way.
The big loser here isn't the press - there are tens of shows now starting daily all begging for attention and coverage. There are more shows to write and talk about and feature than what can be adequately covered by any journalist or media outlet.
Journalists now simply move on and work with TV channels and shows who reach out to them, or where information is readily available.
Sadly those suffering are the public, viewers and potential viewers of kykNET and a show like
Die Spreeus. It negatively affects the people not knowing about it, not knowing that it's on, not knowing when it's starting, or not getting more stories about a series they might be interested in.
When something like the process of "content discovery" for what is actually
on MultiChoice's DStv and StarSat and Netflix South Africa, Showmax, Amazon Prime Video,Viu and the raft of other services have become more and more cumbersome and more difficult than ever before, kykNET and local TV channels in South Africa need to start to step up and do more - not marinade in doing nothing and less.
Viewers might not know it, and a lot of people don't care, but the lack of coverage about locally produced South African TV shows like kykNET's
Die Spreeus is often a horror story not of the media's making but caused by the inaction and subpar efforts of the very TV channels that commissioned these series in the first place, and that these shows are then on.
