I predict that there is absolutely, positively, no question whatsoever that 2015 will be followed immediately by 2016. This will continue for precisely 12 months. Chris Moerdyk, tongue firmly in cheek, looks ahead.
Seriously though, early in the new year, the SABC will appoint a new chairman of the board after being thoroughly vetted by the ANC Cadre Deployment and Jobs For Pals Committee and subsequently declared free of any controversy by the parliamentary portfolio committee on communications.
However, in spite of the new chairnanny’s three doctorates, five MBAs and a cum laude B.Com being verified as true and correct by the University of ShinYang, by the end of March she will be embroiled in a massive media controversy after having been exposed by the Sunday Times for having used crib notes in the entrance exam for the Pretty Polly Playschool in Benoni when she was five and a bit years old.
And talking of the Sunday Times, or rather its parent, the Times Media Group, or rather its parent, Blackstar, more money will be pumped into its Vidi video-on-demand-over-the-internet service after it was found that only one person in South Africa had a fast enough internet to be able to download their movies and even then Jacob Zuma said he did not have time to watch movies because the “demands of myriad wives, Nkandla tuck shop stocktaking, affairs of state and affairs generally”.
Sadly, by mid year, more editorial staff will leave Independent Media in spite of grimly having hung on for their pensions, with the result that all the group’s titles will feed off a centralised newsroom edited by a former pension-deprived linotype operator from the old Argus Group and two computer nerds aggregating editorial content from every corner of the internet and from snitches within the ANC and DA.
Naspers will continue to make a disgusting amount of money from its TV holdings and through its acquisition of the Beijing Bugle and majority shareholdings in Facebook, Twitter and Amazon.
Later in the year, e.tv and eNCA will regret the dismissal of Marcel Golding but will hope that at the end of 2015 he will once again dig into his personal cash stash and splash out on bonuses for all.
By December, everyone in HCI and the greater e.tv family will be begging Marcel to come back with everything being forgiven, but he will just smile, give them the finger and carry on with his duties as the only board member of the SABC able to spell ‘broadcast’.
As Eskom continues on its loadshedding spree with nonchalance and abandon, DStv will launch a new channel solely devoted to those programmes everyone missed during the blackouts.
This will be added as a feature on the Explora decoder, called Catchup-on-the-Catchup. It will be accessed via a button on the remote with a weeping smiley face.
In July a radio station in South Africa will refuse to accept an ad on the basis that it “is pathetic, puerile and just plain bladdy bad”.
Only kidding; the chance of that happening is a million times less likely that Naspers buying Amazon.
By September, the Loerie judges will recommend that radio advertising be removed from the awards due to absolutely no chance of any nomination winning anything.
And so the power of radio will continue to be undermined by the deep pathos of its advertising content.
The Loerie Awards, being held for the first time in Durban, will be a great success with 92% of attendees saying that a Bunny Chow and Cane beat the hell out of Chateaubriand and Meerlust.
Apart from all of the above, a lot of other things will happen in the media world in 2015, all of which I predict will be absolutely true.
Seriously.
Follow Chris Moerdyk on Twitter @chrismoerdyk
IMAGE: Wikimedia Creative Commons
