Friday, April 29, 2011

BREAKING. What is TopTV planning for its 1st birthday on Sunday, 1 May? Well, to be shockingly honest, absolutely NOTHING.


TopTV is turning 1 year old this Sunday, 1 May, after On Digital Media (ODM) launched its commercial pay TV service a year ago - but you'd be forgiven for not realizing that or even be aware that TopTV is ''celebrating'' a first birthday. The company is doing absolutely nothing to celebrate this milestone and its first birthday.

TopTV is not engaging with the press or responding to media enquiries and isn't planning on making any operational executives or its CEO available for interviews with the press (I've been asking for the past two weeks and asked again as late as yesterday - TopTV isn't even officially acknowledging any of multiple media enquiries). Besides that TopTV's CEO Vino Govender decided to take extended leave and isn't working anyway. Vino Govender seemingly couldn't care less about what people think of the company he's supposed to be managing or the growing negative perception within the TV industry, the press, subscribers and shareholders who are all wondering: What is going on with TopTV?

There will be no TopTV press conference today or over the weekend, no conference call with journalists, no celebrations, no weighing in on the past year's challenges and successes; no looking forward and giving some perspective on new developments and adjusted timeframes for the roll-out of possible new channels and services; and not even congratulatory messages from channel providers on the TopTV platform.

Why not? Well, even I don't know why not. What I do know is that it's incredibly bad. It's bad from the point of a media company who either don't know (or refuse to) engage with the press. It's bad for subscribers, shareholders, potential new subscribers and the general TV industry who have no idea what's going on with TopTV. Public relations wise not doing the slightest thing or even finding executive to talk about TopTV, is deplorable. And then it's personally bad form to not even even acknowledge the benchmark of a 1st birthday.

Not only should any company know better and do better, but a media company and a pay TV operator should be much better. TopTV shocking lack of communication and celebration organization  around it's first birthday on Sunday is head-shakingly inexplicable. Whatever TopTV's future might be - based on the pay TV operator not even wanting to acknowledge or talk about its first birthday or the past year's performance - it strangely seems to be a future that TopTV themselves doesn't seem or deem to be good enough worth celebrating.