Final comment for today on Hlaudi (other than my column on him but that I will post tomorrow): Theres one very important point Hlaudi Motsoeneng makes in the City Press interview with him carried today. And its a point I agree with 100%. Hlaudi is spot on that broadcasters need to initiate more news stories and better feature stories THAT DO NOT take their cue from print media. Radio is particularly bad in this regard (and Im happy to include Power 98.7 in this self-examination). TV is slightly better but not by much. Take talk radio. A huge source of our news bulletins comes from the print media. And talk shows like my own hardly ever give you original documentaries - we once gave you a sort of 5 minutes - done in house by my team or some other colleagues feeding original content into our shows. We read the papers & regurgitate it and simply ask those newsmakers to voice whats quoted in the newspapers, on TV or radio. Now obviously Im generalising here: there are some broadcasters that are more guilty of this laziness than others; some shows on some TV and radio platforms better at getting it right more often than others. But I think its fair to say local broadcasters generally slavishly rely on print to set broadcast agendas. Where Hlaudi is dead WRONG Im afraid is thinking that licensing journalists is the answer. It isnt. The answer is simple: put these desired outputs into the KPIs of your staff; give them the resources and support structures thereafter to deliver these outputs; do not editorially mess with their creative space; just let them get on with the job. And, Im afraid, the SABC has a slightly higher burden as a public broadcaster to get this right since it doesnt have the same degree of nefarious commercial pressures the rest of us face. The starting point for achieving this at the SABC is for Hlaudi himself to resign if he takes seriously the role he wants the SABC to play in terms of providing better content. Reason? Nothing at the SABC since hes been acting COO suggests an ability to lead the entity to achieve exactly this. As for us in the commercial space, we too need to set the news agenda. I think we beat print at CREATING MEANING AND DEBATE. But lack in quality news and features production. Whichever way you look at it Hlaudi must go. Ngoku.
Posted on: Sun, 13 Jul 2014 09:21:28 +0000
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