Munier has a broertjie who works in the film industry.
Well, he calls it the film industry, but actually it’s more like a TV commercial industry because all he ever does is shoot ads.
Make no mistake, they’re brilliant, international award-winning ads, much better than the lower-grade spam on foreign channels.
That’s because the best talent and resources in the SA film industry are working in the corporate sector.
Speak to local writers, directors, camera crew and actors, etc. and they’ll tell you they’d rather be working on kwaai movies, TV series and live sports.
There’s brilliant scripts and proposals for shows out there but no funding, and very little air time on public channels.
For years, mense in the industry have been moaning about the SABC and e.tv, saying they spend all their TV licence money and ad revenue on rubbish from American networks.
And all those recycled 90s B-movies.
But when local filmmakers approach the broadcasters with original home-grown concepts, then there’s no money and no air time.
So now the SABC has opened the door for locals and introduced an 80 percent quota for SA content.
Mense in the industry are over the moon about.
But not so much the couch potatoes, who are going to have to say goodbye to their favourite US series.
The biggest blow of all was the announcement that Days of our Lives would be dropped from the SABC’s TV schedule altogether.
For real. Mense are ready to toyi-toyi and necklace Hlaudi Motsoeneng to keep John Black and Marlena on TV.
Why?! Days, which has hogged prime slots on SABC for 25 years, is as bad as smoking. It’s a daily addiction, it adds no value to your life - other than passing the time.
So give up the bad habit.
Is local programming the solution, though? Munier isn’t so sure.
Currently, the quality of local shows and soapies is not that great.
SABC also has a knack of messing up or not delivering on sports broadcasts.
So Hlaudi and his crew need to put their licence money where their mouth is and invest in local talent and shows.
They can start by screening the brilliant Ashley Kriel documentary, Action Kommandant.
But it doesn’t only have to be Struggle movies and Leon Schuster crap local cinema has become synonymous with.
What about a locally-made rom-com, a cop action movie, or horror?
Maybe even give some air time to the Daltjies & Kapparang cartoon crew. Those guys are awesome!