The under-performer’s master stroke!

GILL MOODIE: Last year must have been a very tough year for the Sunday Times. As we know, you were hit by a downturn in careers advertising because of the recession and your sales declined and then your investigations team of Jocelyn Maker and Megan Power was no more. (Maker left journalism for the tourist industry and Power became the Durban bureau chief.)

Mondli Makhanya

MONDLI MAKHANYA: Definitely… The economic downturn had a major effect – no question about it. On the advertising side, we felt it very, very strongly and we also felt it on the circulation side and the latest ABCs (circulation figures) will tell you that. You know, people had to make choices: ‘Do I pay R14 X four for a newspaper or shall this contribute to my family’s groceries?’ So we felt it. In all my years of editing, that was the roughest year ever. Also, we were recovering from a hectic 2008, in which we made some very serious slip-ups to put it kindly – for instance, with the Transnet story. (The story alleged that Transnet had secretly sold for R7bn 22kms of coast line and 90kms of sea in Table Bay in Cape Town to investors in London and Dubai.)

QUESTION: Except no one’s going to forget the “Manto: a drunk and a thief” splash (in 2007). That was the story of the decade.
ANSWER: Yes, you come off that high of all those investigations – and you’re scoring first – and then we had that front-page apology (over the innacuracies in the Transnet story). It burns you and it dented confidence (in the newsroom) and we brought in that panel (of Anton Harber, Paula Fray, Dario Milo and Franz Kruger to look into problems in news processes and editorial management of the paper). So we’d gone through some pain in 2009. We were coming off the back of these things and we were in recovery mode… it was a hard year. It was a year of rebuilding…. TO READ THE REST OF THE INTERVIEW, CLICK HERE TO GO TO MY WEEKLY COLUMN AT MONEYWEB.

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This will lift your spirits: the big number is Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.

The arena for this battle – and don’t let anyone tell you that it isn’t a battle – has been Icasa and though the submissions to the regulator from the public and stakeholders are as dry as toast, blood pressure is up on all sides. The money is big and the stakes are high.

On the one hand, there is the government’s determination not to allow pay-TV operations to acquire exclusive rights to broadcast national sporting events that all South Africans should be able to watch and enjoy – and, crucially, for children on all backgrounds to be inspired to grow up to be national sporting heroes.

There are also the national sports bodies, which rely on money from broadcast rights for an average 60% of their revenue. Internationally, sports bodies’ revenue comes from – in descending order of importance – broadcasting rights, sponsorships, ticket sales, merchandising and government subsidies and grants, according to Amanda Armstrong, a director and law specialist in telecommunications and broadcasting at Werksmans Attorneys. In South Africa, the government’s contribution was less than 1% of the annual revenue of most sports bodies in 2008.

There are the free-to-air channels, e.tv and the SABC, for which there are obvious commercial gains – both in terms of audience and advertising – if they can get the first option to bid without competition from pay-TV operations for more live sport. SABC and e.tv say – a tad sanctimoniously – in their Icasa submissions that the “… the broadcast of key sporting events on pay-TV has a negative impact on the participation of many South Africans in sport and could undermine the transformation in sport”. But free-to-air channels can often struggle to find air space to broadcast live events amid their local content programming. It’s worth noting, for instance, that the tripartite agreement between the PSL, SuperSport and the SABC (struck after SuperSport snapped up the exclusive rights in 2007 for the PSL from SABC), the public broadcaster was in fact required to broadcast more games than it did in the previous season when it held all the PSL rights.

The last players in this drama are the pay-TV operators such as DStv’s SuperSport as well as the new guys on the block, ODM and Super 5 Media, which are expected to launch this year. SuperSport, which coughed up about R2bn for the exclusive broadcast rights of PSL soccer games over five years, is hugely concerned about the current Icasa review. Chiefly, the problem is that there’s no point is spending large sums of money if you can’t get them exclusively… TO READ THE FULL COLUMN, CLICK HERE TO GO TO MONEYWEB.

First up, Lisa MacLeod, who was the chief sub and managing editor of Business Day a few years back, has been made managing editor of the Financial Times in London. WHICH IS HUGE!!! And she’s only in her 30s so you can see how good Lisa is to rise that high at the FT,  one of the most respected papers in the world.

I worked for Lisa at Business Day in the 90s and she was a superb manager and one of the most organised – and genuinely nice – people I’ve come across in journalism. She also happens to come from Grubstreet’s town, East London, so don’t let any tell you that this is a plekkie of skates and surfers. Lisa has been working at the FT for quite a few years.

And then another East Londoner (though to be fair he was only born here and I think he might deny it)  is up to interesting things. Matthew Buckland is leaving 24.com’s innovation unit,  20FourLabs, to do his own thing. This includes a digital agency and consultancy based in Cape Town and Joburg and launching a new website, Memeburn, — which Matthew describes as “a Mashable/Techcrunch for emerging market tech“.

So exciting for stuff!  We could do with a bit more spunk in SA’s online news world – and Grubstreet is contributing to Memeburn so watch this space!

.. Look to the heavens. hold your hands up and chant “Serenity Now” – A montage from the classic “Serenity Now” Seinfeld episode.

Not only is this classic George Castanza rant from Seinfeld a laugh but I bet you wish sometimes that you could lose it with your boss like this.