Citytv’s Nick Taylor wants to see communities involved in regional stations, writes Neil Beerbaum
Nick Taylor has a show in his mind which illustrates what regional television can be about: “There is a man in Guguletu who makes washing powder in his garage over the weekends. He believes it washes faster and whiter than other branded washing powders. He packs it into brown paper bags and sells about ten packets a week through his friend’s spaza shop.”
Taylor wants to televise a wash-off between this man’s washing powder and a conventional washing powder. “This would make great television,” he says “It would be real entertaining stuff.” It would also boost the man’s sales. “He could start selling 100 or 300 a week, he could give up his job, and we would have a regular advertising client.”
Taylor gets so excited he’s up off his chair, his hand on my shoulder, saying, “This is tangible television. It’s people you can touch, who you are likely to see in the street the next day. It’s television that makes eye contact.”
He is talking about an idea he had to bring television into people’s lives, and bring people’s lives into television. “Television as we know it has been taken away from people and put into studios,” he continues. But this need not be the case, in his opinion. It is an atavistic mindset that makes TV clinical and out of reach.
Taylor has secured the rights to bring this concept to South Africa. By means of a franchise agreement, he can use the name of the Canadian parent company, Citytv, its programme formats and promotional links. “These are the rails on which the whole thing runs,” says Taylor. “Having those promotional slots available to us can save us millions of rands.”
Other savings, he adds, come from the fact that most of the programming is live and so there is no need for expensive record formats. Live news can be shot in SuperVHS or Hi-8 and transmitted back to the studios using a microwave link. That link might be expensive but instead of huge lorries to cover a news story or event, a 4×4 or minibus can be rigged out. This is far more mobile and enables VJs to chase news stories as they happen.
He shows me a video of the Citytv studios in Toronto. The camera moves along the sidewalk outside the building. There is a queue of people waiting for their turn in Speakers’ Corner, a booth where you pay one dollar and you get a minute to do anything you want on camera. The accumulated video material is edited each week down to 30 minutes and is broadcast during prime time on the station, which reaches the greater Toronto area. People see themselves and their friends on TV doing the craziest — and the most normal — things. The camera enters the building, which is a vast warehouse of editing desks and screens, cameras and people. There is someone standing in a bit of open space, talking into a camera. He is reading the news. Live. Our camera rushes by him and becomes part of the background action to the broadcast.
The two cameras stare at each other briefly, but without the embarrassment of old men in a changeroom that would happen in conventional news broadcasts. Instead this is deliberately done. Live coverage of any news story by Citytv always uses two cameras; each one always has the other in view. They even film each other going out on the story. The process is as important as the story, says Taylor.
The camera rushes around, into the founder’s office. He barely looks up from his work. It takes us through a meeting room. Nobody takes any notice. They are accustomed to being on camera, on television, while they work. There are no silent recording studios. Every room, even the toilets, is wired to receive sound and video from a camera and transmit it back to the control desks.
It’s time for the breakfast show, so a small camera crew rushes to the coffee shop over the road where the presenter does the whole show while people come in and out and have coffee and breakfast. The presenter may be interviewing a local celebrity and other customers will come over and chat. People see themselves and their friends on TV, the station gets a free studio and the coffee shop gets advertising. At lunch they go to the local deli and a similar exchange is done. A person in the store might be asked to present some part of the
In South Africa, Taylor asked a group of Guguletu residents to talk about the advantages and disadvantages of electronic media as they had experienced it in South Africa. The advantages were sparse, and very boring: they saw electronic media as educative; a source of information; and as providing exposure to other cultures.
The disadvantages were all the things that have defined the nature of television: there is no feedback, no reponse, no community interaction — the viewer becomes a receiver; it is expensive and out of reach of ordinary people; it is monopolised and there is no community control; it is manipulative. “These are all the selling points of Citytv,” says Taylor, “and they are all an indictment of the way TV is done at the
According to Taylor, the format has the highest share of audience of all 59 stations broadcasting into the Toronto area, with 12 percent to 15 percent of the audience watching Citytv at any one time, and he believes if it were introduced in South Africa it would radically change the way we view TV. As a concept, we would begin to see TV as an accessible, interactive medium. As viewers, we would see it as relevant to our personal lives; responsive rather than dictating.
It would promote local production extensively, in his opinion. “It dominates [in Toronto] without importing expensive sitcoms and soaps. We do not want it to be a soap station, but we also don’t want to be some kind of Woolworth’s where we are the only outlet for local producers. We will help them sell their material elsewhere if we cannot use it. We must develop a separate film industry that can produce for other distribution channels.”
However, he has a problem with the Independent Broadcasting Authority’s recommendations that 40 percent of local content productions should be commissioned to outside producers. “That can affect the station’s identity,” he says.
He made a presentation to the IBA last week in this regard. Absent from the triple inquiry hearings, he says he was not aware that he could have made a private submission. At the time he did not want to give away too much of his business plan.
He did, however, make presentations to the provincial governments, offering them a solution for their regional TV needs. “I responded to a statement which said that the regional governments wanted regional television but they did not want the current SABC stuff; they were also not prepared to pay or do public service broadcasting as housing was a priority. I told them it is possible to set up a station cheaply that will serve the region. I suggested it should remain privately owned and independent, that it would lose credibility if it had political connections.”
Taylor also disagrees with the notion implied in the IBA report that regional TV should be controlled centrally by the SABC: “You would have to fit in with the style of the network,” he argues. Instead he likens regional TV to industrial theatre, which adapts its show as it moves into different areas.
While Taylor realises that it would have to be a profitable venture in order to survive and grow, he adds that he and his partners “are not in it for the money. And that makes us dangerous.” What makes regional TV work, in his opinion, is the passion and energy of the people, the ideas the have, their ability to turn local events into entertainment. He shows me a list of projects that the Guguletu Reconstructin and Development Programme committee has planned. “I see entertaining TV programmes in all of these projects,” he says.