Two days after the Asian tsunami my girlfriend and I were sitting in a hotel room in Malaysia watching BBC. “Lucky” is an indulgent word for what we had been feeling – the death toll had been comparatively minimal on our island, so maybe we just felt “thankful” that we hadn’t been on the beach and that the dive scheduled for December 26th had been over-booked and our names bumped off the list. But whatever it was, the BBC that night was getting us pretty riled up. There on the screen was Lyse Doucet, hosting a panel discussion on the devastation, and she was arrogantly ignoring the best question we’d heard since this disaster had been turned by the news networks into one more mind-numbingly repetitive and misleadingly funereal gameshow.
The question was put by a Thai official. He wanted to know why none of the networks had put out an alert. They all have full-time meteorological expertise, he pointed out. They all have people who know (or should know) that an earthquake of such magnitude out at sea causes a tsunami. From the time of the quake to the time the wave slammed into the various Indian Ocean coasts, there was a lapse of between half-an-hour and three hours. Thousand of lives could have been saved. Why no alert?
Despite a few hours of searching, it isn’t yet clear whether the question has been asked of the networks again. There certainly doesn’t seem to have been any attempt at an answer. Maybe it has been brought up somewhere, maybe it will be. The best it offers now is another question: what exactly is it that media does?
Against this background, South African media is doing considerably better than it was a year ago. In February 2004 we ran a cover on the industry’s “annus horribilis”, looking specifically at who and what had covered us in shame. This February the most significant events to look back on are not lies, evasions and gratuitous thefts of copy, but the results of the listed media companies. Taken together, the numbers out of our conglomerates provide strong evidence that media is re-entering a time of plenty. The cover story (page 13) focuses on the sterling Naspers and Johncom results, and compares them according to criteria we think the market would use. There’s also a forecast for the coming year (page 15), based on the predictions of some of world’s top ad buying agencies, and it gives some good reasons to be upbeat.
This month we also focus on youth media across print (page 17), broadcast (page 25) and alternative (page 29). These pieces ask a common question: with the spending power of the youth now universally acknowledged, what are the obstacles to reaching them?
Finally, we’d like to draw your attention to the magazine’s redesign. It’s been a long time coming. We trust it will result in a cleaner and more enjoyable read.
Kevin Bloom