10/30/07

ESSAY

The IDIOT BOX Just Got a Little Biggest (not smaller) Have you recently watched that television advertisement whereby everyone seems to know what the phrase '...dancing like a white man!' means while it's mentioned so many times to the point that you start to feel like that poor young man who is clueless and hopeless? Clueless because he's been hooked on free-to-air and South African Broadcasting Corporation and was probably a fan of open time before the window was closed. I'm sure for a few it has crossed their minds that the world is moving in such a fast pace that if they don't get themselves satellite dishes and decoders they will be wondering who is dancing like a white man. Before you jump and overburden your budget with a Dstv bouquet slow down and save money and pay your television license with it. Hey, plus the taxman wants what is due to him.
To be honest, I expect to get some criticism here, especially from those who are already experiening debit orders from Multichoice; there actually is nothing on satellite that the average television viewer of SABC1,2,3, Africa and etv is missing. I know nobody is taking the SABC that seriously these days, which is understood given the style of management there but it's better than a third of the channels on satellite where you think you are missing the dancing white man.
There is nothing that is happening there that should warrant those extra few hundreds just to join the crew and be able to shout, 'ei joe, he was dancing like a white man'. That's because no one was dancing like a white man because white men can't dance like HipHopPantsula, the nation has reached a concensus. Period.
The recent announcement by Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA) that the much dreaded digital migration has now become a reality should be interesting. They say, as we have told you in this column before when Telkom Media and friends applied for licenses that there will be more choice next year, finally you will have more options to the extent that when a bunch of new subcribers tell you about someone dancing like a white man you can tell them about someone doing samba like a Brazilian.
Telkom Media is here with its satellite bouquet next year thus ending the monopoly of Dstv. Hoping it ends the Americanisation that comes with Channel O, MTV, VH1 and MTV Africa.
Someone please indulge those who never saw how a white man dances what is on Channel 102? They call it Africa Magic and it's filled with Nigerian films from Nollywood. Those low-budget flicks are synonymous with weak sound, bad camera work, poor scripts, narrow themes and everything unAfrican. It seems Nigeria is a world in itself.
Then the rest of the channels like Discovery, Real TV, Cartoon Network, History Channel and many others are so obsessed with repeating programmes to the extent that nobody worries about missing anything. CNN, BBC, Sky, Al-Jazeera, CNBC, Bloomberg are obsessed with reminding us how big America is which we know because some Americans, especially those who like to call themselves 'niggas' have indicated that they also don't even know how big it is.
And there's that boring Big Brother Africa.
No wonder we advise you; wait, don't feel left out because it's interesting times in South Afrika. And you most definitely are going to be part of those who benefit when Dstv finally faces real competition. There's always a choice at the end of the rainbow. You can be an idiot with 200 choices of canned idiocy next year.

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