In her article ZA News and the irony of local satire facing extinction, Mandy de Waal laments the fact that local broadcasters do not have the stomach for satire, and in particular the type of satire offered up by ZA NEWS and their puppets.
The irony of this "irony" is that e.tv and eNews Channel are about to launch their second season of Late Nite News with Loyiso Gola. LNN is a satirical political show, the only difference is the characters are real - not plastic.
"This does increase the costs of personnel slightly, because you have to feed real people lunch and enter into contracts" says e.tv spokesperson, Vasili Vass. "ZA NEWS is lucky that puppets don't eat, and if a character is no longer needed they can simply have them recycled at their nearest Piki-Tup collection depot."
Adds Patrick Conroy, eNews Channel head "We can also uses phrases like 'who pulls the strings around here?' without offending the puppet masters".
e.tv's Channel head, Monde Twala says "For us it comes down to costs and humour, and quite frankly there was nothing funny about their costs." Says Conroy "At 3million rand a year it would be the most expensive show on the eNews Channel, which just isn't worth it if the show isn't that funny. The puppets are cute, cuddly even, but not that funny."
In De Waal's article founding member of ZA NEWS, Thierry Cassuto says it would be great if channels like e.tv or M-Net "grew a spine" and realised how ready South Africa is for satire. Well yes, we are aware and we have responded with the very funny guy called Loyiso Gola. So everyone can relax and stop calling on others to grow a spine. However, if anyone has a spare calculator or part-time researcher we do know two people who can use them.
