Here’s a little David and Goliath story - although at this point, it is difficult to see how David is not going to get the stuffing beaten out of him.
By way of very short background before my yarn begins, the facts are that Multichoice, owner of the DSTv bouquet of channels, has, despite a number of assurances, been unable to pay WildEarth for our content.?
Let us go back in time…
On the 7th of March 2020, I was married. The date is significant for our whole nation - not, surprisingly, because all 60 million residents of Mzansi should give a flying springbok about my nuptials. Rather, this was the weekend that Covid arrived in the Beloved Country - in the somnambulant environs of Howick (just down the road from where I was hitched). Two and a bit weeks later, lockdown began. These were traumatic times for most South Africans - I can only imagine what it must have been like: young families ricocheting off the walls of small homes; families isolated from each other; friends unable to commune - our social species suddenly forced to solitude (or interminable months with undesirable relatives).
Lockdown for me was different. As the curfew curtain fell, I drove into the deserted northern Sabi-Sands to begin a long stint presenting live safaris for WildEarth. We had been broadcasting continuously for five years by the time lockdown started and barely anyone in South Africa knew of us. Now, suddenly cooped up in their homes, South Africans began to search desperately for an authentic connection with nature.?
And WildEarth gave it to them - free for six hours a day.
Our YouTube audience increased six-fold overnight as word spread that WildEarth was broadcasting - taking our country’s exquisite natural heritage into locked-down homes. Helping barricaded families escape into nature.?
Sometime during lockdown, WildEarth did a (bad) deal with Multichoice where we agreed to pay them to be on their channel…yes, I am not sure how that works either. Just so you understand, Multichoice pays the likes of Nat Geo, Nat Geo Wild, Discovery (all foreign) and many others for their content. That, really, is how it should work - you sell a platform, you fill it with content, you pay the people who make the content for their content. How many concerts have you been to where the band has paid you to listen to them??
The argument for these sorts of deals is that you are getting ‘exposure’. When I was a struggling musician, the most irritating thing I ever heard was, ‘can you come and play at my function? We can’t pay you but it will be good exposure.’ Does anyone know what exposure tastes like? I do. It tastes like flatulence. It is inedible and you cannot buy anything with it.?
It has been almost four years since we started broadcasting on DSTv - for free. We know you pay them but they do not pay us. It is rare for me to go into a public space and not have someone come up to me and say, ‘Jeez, those live safaris really helped us during the dark days of lockdown.’
But this is not a story about me blowing my Z-grade internet celebrity trumpet.
What I have written here perfectly encapsulates what WildEarth means to people and why what we do is so important. Since the advent of the agricultural revolution some 10 000 years ago, we’ve slowly eroded our deep connection with the natural world. That connection was a fundamental feature of our early history as a species. Now it is hardly a memory - and the consequences are plain for anyone to see - massive habitat loss and reduction of some 70% of wildlife since 1970. Yet, we long for nature - Some people spend eye-watering amounts of time and money on pursuits that take them into nature. Why? Well to those who do it, the answer is obvious - they are drawn to nature -? for peace, wonder, mental health, truth, sanity, survival.
For those that don’t have the cash, there is WildEarth - a genuinely authentic journey into nature - unsanitized and raw. Sometimes tear-jerkingly beautiful, nauseatingly gruesome, hysterically funny, inescapably tragic, meditative and peaceful - a constant source of wonder.?
No one else can do what we do - we make more local content per day than any other local broadcaster and at a fraction of the cost. We take South African stories, told by South Africans to the world. We promote the country as a destination and our natural heritage as an international treasure. We give succour to the lonely, inspiration and education to the young, beauty, peace and laughter to all.?
Multichoice claims the following as a mission: We entertain, inform and empower African communities that inspire and build us in return. MultiChoice is Africa's leading entertainment platform, with a mission to enrich lives. It is very difficult to see how what WildEarth does, does not encapsulate this. It is even harder to see how paying international mega-corporations for their African content somehow fits more readily with this mission. Why not work with us to create a truly African nature channel that produces the best of live and non-live content at a fraction of the price of our international competitors? Why pay European and US companies for African nature programming??
Goliath (Multichoice) is experiencing some tough times - we know that. But David (WildEarth) is about to starve to death. And that is desperately sad. We offer so much for so little to so many. So maybe, this once, Goliath should back off, reconsider his priorities and give us a lifeline. We have told so many wonderful, important nature stories in the past. We have so many more to tell at a time when those stories of inspiration, beauty and authenticity have never been more needed.?
By: James Hendry - Head of Live Content and Ops