Film & TV: Parliament responds to Showmax shutdown

0:00It's eight minutes before eight o'clock, 10 for us to shift our attention to film and TV. And one of the big stories, kind of one, not kind of, but certainly playing out at the moment, is what is happening at multi-choice, following their acquisition by French Giant Canal+. We heard a couple of weeks ago that showmax would be wrapping up its operations, and then we heard the plans by the French owners to replace showmax. Now we hear there is a new part in this saga, and it does feel a little bit like we're in an episode of Days of Our Lives.

1:00So the latest in the saga is that portfolio committee on communications and digital technologies, they're now planning special oversight to visit the broadcasting sector. This is after Canal Places announcement that they're going to discontinue showmax, which was unprofitable and costing them a lot of money, to give us the latest on this episode, which joined by TV and entertainment critic. He's also an entertainment journalist, Tennis Forever, who joins us on the line. Tennis, a very good warning too. Hello there. So we now hear that Parliament seems to be planning to step in to address or begin involved with the showmax matter. What do we know? We can maybe send over some great one, learn to read books. It seems the parliamentarians haven't really read over the past year and a half, and this week when they discovered that the deradorable shows on showmax are ending, they are suddenly up in arms and asking questions like, oh, is the end of showmax going to lead to job losses?

2:02And obviously the answer is yes. So it's not the case of the evil Stefano who abducted Marlena, but Canal Places that obviously promise that they're not going to retrench any multi-choice workers for a period of three years, but that doesn't include TV and film productions who get commissioned by multi-choice to make shows for service or platform like showmax, move them, don't get those commissions anymore. And then imagine, I'm asking you to make me a TV show or form the new, go in higher between 50 and 200 people to make youngers or spinners or something, those jobs are no longer going to exist because multi-choice and eminent are not going to commission that number of shows for showmax, because it no longer exists. So this week showmax also sent out a notification to tell subscribers that the last day that showmax

3:02will exist will be the 30th of April. So the last day that you can pay for that service or user voucher that you bought maybe on your banking app would be the 30th of March. And now the parliamentarians are waking up and asking a lot of these questions that they should have interrogated and investigated and have asked about a year and a half ago. And so it seems that the question mainly is coming from the EFF, secretly, secretly, shared, contacted the chairperson of the committee, Kusella Sangu Nidiko, and said multi-choice should be prepared to answer a number of questions. The one is the definitive timeline and rationale for ending or restructuring showmax, which that has been given and it's been given recently, a thorough assessment of the potential job losses, both at multi-choice and within the wider form and television industry. And then also the future of existing showmax original productions and the accessibility to South African viewers.

4:04So interesting that those are the questions that the committee is wanting to get from well, multi-choice and all canal plus. All of the political parties were actually quite greeting the questions that they asked, but unfortunately that horse has bolted. So I'm wondering in what world they love team to have not have done their proper oversight and duty to ask these sort of incisive questions. They are asking all of the right questions, unfortunately, it's just a little bit too late. Now once and then they had the IKASA and the competition commission who were like, oh, nothing was wrong or done wrong or whatever in the takeover transaction, but the competition commission was like, oh, we will now investigate the decisions and whether the closure of showmax is breaching the transaction or whatever, but of course it isn't really. You just can't let go of the actual multi-choice fixed appointed staff.

5:07So yeah, it's a little bit the cut in front of the horse belatedly. Right. And so we see that there's also now the committee is going to be doing a special oversight visit to the broadcasting sector from the end of March to it's 31 March into the 1st of April, they'll do ETV multi-choice and other commercial broadcasters. Do we have any idea what that oversight visit will be looking for? Because I guess the one to multi-choice is very different to the one the ETV has not just been sold, whereas multi-choice has and they have new owners. But so any idea what those oversight visits look like? They usually talk to the executives, they sort of talk to the staff they've done it before with the SAPC as well and they sort of recently went on a set visit for the Netflix series One Piece, which is the most expensive show being formed and made in South Africa, although it's an international company, and they sort of shake hands and drink a fanta. And what I would really like to implore them because the SAPC staff have told me that in the past,

6:10when they sort of come and talk, it sort of salty cracks and a little bit of tea or whatever, talk to the actual staffers on the ground level, they kind of always being hidden away in the corridors, go and search them out and ask them how they feel, ask them what's the issues, they will tell you that the microphones in the radio studios at the SAPC's not working, don't just talk to the executives, they're going to give you sort of like a one-sided, very rosy story. So these parliamentarians are going to go and talk to a little bit of the lay of the land of commercial broadcasters, like Indian multi-choice, and I really would implore them to actually talk to the rank and file, and not to the more leaners and the staff and those who's the faces of these companies. So they're just doing commercial broadcasters, which means the SAPC, even though they have commercial entities, so they've got commercial radio channels and commercial TV channels, they're not going to be included in this round.

7:11No, they have previously been at the SAPC to talk there when it was the public broadcaster, which is kind of getting erased this time, they're not showing the news, but usually when one of the broadcasters are sort of involved in these headline grabbing stories, they go and sort of visit there, so this time it will just be the commercial broadcasters, because the issue that they realise is they are now starting to get worried, which they should have been a long time ago, about sort of this intense consolidation of our local media sphere, where there are not really diversity and enough companies to, when one gets taken over, basically everybody loses. Tiennes, there's always a great pleasure having you on the show. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you. That's independent TV and film critic, and journalist Tiennes, where we are taking us to 8 o'clock and your latest eyewitness news.