Netflix frees ‘bantustan broadcasting’
Global streaming platform breaks racial boundaries for local movies
● Comedian-turned-filmmaker Kagiso Lediga likens the arrival of Netflix to the second undoing of apartheid — in the broadcasting industry at least, where the US content-streaming platform is creating a major shake-up.
Lediga’s film Catching Feelings, a dark romantic comedy, launched on the streaming platform over a week ago as the first South African movie to premiere there. The Xhosa initiation movie Inxeba has been broadcast only on the US service — not the local version, which was launched in 2016.
The customary tension with local-content gatekeepers was absent in the engagement with Netflix, Lediga said.
Local commissioning editors have historically been concerned about content being “too smart” for South African audiences.
“The audiences have always been smart, it’s the broadcasters who are making them stupid. You just have to have faith and take risks,” Lediga commented.
“I think maybe it’s a hangover from apartheid. It’s like we still have bantustans in broadcasting.
“There’s the Zulu one, the Tswana and Sotho/Venda one, there’s the Afrikaans one, there’s the white-people one and nobody ever makes universal content that speaks to the entire group.
“If I go to SABC with Catching Feelings they will say: ‘If it was a little bit more youth and Zulu.’ If I go to Mzansi Magic they are going to say the same thing. If I go to M-Net they will say: ‘It’s a black thing.’ It’s like the racist hangovers are still there.”
The entry of international content-streaming players has shaken up South Africa’s broadcasting industry, with the industry giant in Naspers’s pay-TV operation feeling the pinch from declining subscriber numbers.
It’s a stated strategy of the US-based Netflix to boost its subscriber numbers by splashing out on local original content in the countries where it operates.
Last year, Netflix spent $7-billion on such content. This year it expects to spend as much as $8-billion (about R100-billion). It’s an outlay that local players such as MultiChoice, the cash-strapped public broadcast- er SABC and the HCI-owned e.tv can’t compete with.
“Netflix is truly global. It’s crazy,” Lediga said from his offices in Greenside, Johannesburg. Since his film’s Netflix debut, he has fielded calls from Sweden, Nigeria, North and South America and Australia.
Catching Feelings debuted at the Los Angeles Film Festival and was shown in New York before opening to South African moviegoers in March. It then jumped straight to Netflix, skipping DStv’s BoxOffice offering.
The fact that the movie was first broadcast in South African cinemas was not the preferred method for the US streaming service, according to Lediga.
But being a bunch of pushy South African entrepreneurs, Lediga and his partners got their way.
Netflix doesn’t usually release its films in theatres, “but I guess this market being new for them they were testing out things as well.
It’s like the racist hangovers are still there Kagiso Lediga
Filmmaker
They are all kind of saying:
‘This could be a turning point’ Kagiso Lediga
Filmmaker
That was interesting.”
At the Los Angeles Film Festival, the audience was mostly middle class and white. “They got all of the gags and moments; because I’ve written comedy into it, you know when it’s working because there’ll be laughs. For me it was great to show that it’s a universal story.”
The movie would later show in New York to a more eclectic crowd, with more Africans in the room, he said.
When they made Bunny Chow — a film about two black guys attending the OppiKoppi rock festival in Limpopo — Lediga’s company aimed to market the film on 5FM, but the distributor wanted them to speak to YFM, a predominantly black youth-oriented radio station.
But that type of consumer did not necessarily attend cinema and was probably not familiar with OppiKoppi.
“It’s quite interesting for me putting Catching Feelings out there to the world and people receiving it as a piece of content. They don’t go ‘This is a black thing or a white thing’.
But a degree of risk aversion has hampered the broadcasting industry, he said.
“They want to go with guys that are tried and tested so that they don’t lose their money. But the budgets they do anyway, it’s money that you can afford to risk.
“If you’re trying to compete in the space with people that are in the red for $34-billion and they are like a global behemoth with 12million subscribers and growing, you can’t be stepping on eggs. You’ve got to be stomping in there with heavy boots.
“It’s that namby-pamby risk aversion and if they give some black guy the money he is going to lose it. So he’s got to go partner with some white dude somewhere across town. There’s never a trust in the creative,” he added.
At the local box office Catching Feelings sold 30 000 tickets and raised about R1.5-million — a loss considering that it was made for R4.8-million.
The details of the deal with Netflix are confidential, but Lediga said “it made twice if not more”.
He added: “Whoever is watching space, whoever is sitting at all those broadcasters and platforms, they are all kind of going: ‘This could be a turning point.’ It means that the best content has to go to the best guy for the best money. That’s what all this means for me right now. That’s real competition.”