PETA THORNEYCROFT spoke to SABC refugee John Maytham about his departure and future plans
JOHN MAYTHAM anchored his last national news programme for SAfm on Friday. From his national microphone at AM Live in Johannesburg he is opting for second best and going down to the provinces. And he isn’t even emigrating south “to escape crime” like so many other whiteys.
“Going to Cape Town was never part of the decision. My leisure pursuits are the bushveld. I am a passionate birder not a beach person and Table Mountain isn’t a mountain at all, it’s a pimple.”
Although he won’t admit it, Maytham is taking a lesser, second- best job in Cape Town because he has a sense the SABC is dying. Or irredeemable, or perhaps both. That its malaise is “systemic”; that consultants like McKinsey, employed to cut costs and jobs are “bean counters”, slashing and excising the corporation’s productive heart.
It’s usual for top news anchors like Maytham to have progressed from commercial radio to the usually more prestigious public broadcaster. In South Africa, or in his case, it is the other way around. He’s gone from being probably the best news anchor ever heard on South African radio to a different world. For the purists he’s going from news to show biz.
Maytham came to radio via the theatre, a self-taught journalist with a voice trained for an actor’s range, and pitch perfect timing.
He is anguished about leaving: “It’s been really tough, and they ( the SABC), have gone out of their way to keep me, offering me much more money, reduced work load …
“The SABC is so vast, so poorly put together. I have also been acting as executive producer (for AM Live) for the last three months, and yet I had so little control. We set up a network of correspondents, but we can’t afford them. AM Live had no journalists of its own.
“Most of the broadcasters with any experience came from the Nationalist Party, so it was inevitable the new managers would be people from the print media. I don’t know enough about SABC management and its decisions to know if it could have been done better, but I think they were naive; they took the IBA’s word they would get the money from the sale of the SABC’s radio stations; they took it in good faith the government would fulfill its public broadcasting mandate.”
He winces, maybe it was a laugh: “they should have got it in writing.
“The SABC has an impossible dilemma – it is disingenuous of the government to expect them to be able to deliver in 11 languages; to provide information, analysis, entertainment; to build a solid system; when the old ways were too entrenched to change.
“Mckinsey has been looking at the wrong things. My heart bleeds for the SABC. Part of my decision to leave was influenced by how many competent people are leaving the SABC. For example, Hein Marais came here to achieve quality broadcasting, but he couldn’t, so he left. Given what is happening, I can see a time coming when the inability to achieve quality will be overwhelming. I had to look forward a year or so …
“In certain key areas commercial players are paying more, but that is not why I am going. The SABC must develop a strategy for keeping talented people, and perhaps a more subtle and responsive management style. I am very sad to be leaving. And flattered that people have identified me as a central part of the programme. But you know, it’s going to keep going; there are 15 other people involved who work bloody hard.”
Maytham also worked bloody hard for the two years and three months since SAfm lurched into being, amid so much self-inflicted controversy in March 1995.
He was instantly better than any of his predecessors on SABC or competing regional stations. His much less experienced co-host Sally Burdett grew into her job, and within months, AM Live was breaking stories, setting the pace for the day’s news. No news journalist could ignore it, nor the opinions coaxed out of politicians and headline makers by Maytham’s penetrating, polite questions.
He leaves his national job largely unknown outside of SAfm’s small, but influential, listenership. SABC had little cash to promote AM Live, even though statistics show three quarters of all the station’s listeners are accounted for by its morning news show. But the competitors noticed, they could hear.
Maytham, tired and drawn, has been offered a plum job as news editor of Primedia’s new baby, Cape Talk. It means “the thrill of a new station; the financial support of Primedia. And I will be able to hire, train and assign a small team.” He will also host an afternoon show in Cape Town. Sounds fantastic, a dream job.
But this week, his last at AM Live, Maytham didn’t look as though he was celebrating.