As you may have seen in the
High Rollers December teasers, the series has been rocked by a fiasco.
Series producers Rous House Productions released a statement in November, saying that the SABC had cancelled the show. This is it:
"It is with great regret that we announce that the SABC have signalled their intent to cancel High Rollers within 30 business days based on programming strategy changes on SABC 3.
Rous House Productions does not agree with the SABC’s cancellation letter and we as the production company are working with our partners, the SABC, to resolve this matter."
SABC remained quiet on the matter and gave no comment despite numerous attempts by TVSA to get a statement from SABC spokesperson Kaizer Kganyago.
Two weeks later Rous House Productions released another statement saying that their talks with the SABC had been unsuccessful and they were applying for an interdict to reverse the decision.
This is an extract from it:
"Rous House Productions (RHP) and the SABC met on Monday the 5th of Dec for a round table discussion in order to find a better resolution to the proposed 30 business day termination of High Rollers. The meeting was unsuccessful.
RHP has no other choice but to approach the courts with an application for an urgent interdict to stop the SABC from cancelling High Rollers. This application was served on SABC on the 7th of Dec and a court date has been set to hear the urgent case within the next week.
At the same time RHP is submitting an application to the governing body of broadcasters in South Africa, ICASA, to intervene on an urgent basis and set aside the SABC’s decision to cancel the High Rollers contract."
In a further attempt to get clarity, TVSA spoke to the SABC's Head of Publicity Zandile Nkonyeni who told us that the series hasn't been cancelled and that the SABC wasn't aware of the above statement by Rous House Productions.
Amidst all this, SABC3 released two sets of High Rollers teasers: the first is for January, which only has eight episodes. Both High Rollers and Generations have been hijacked by AFCON on SABC1 so Generations has been scheduled to air in place of High Rollers for the duration of the tournament.
The second set of teasers is for February, with a notable change. Episodes will only air three days a week (Mondays to Wednesdays) instead of the five.
And that's the most concrete information available. There's no clarity regarding how many episodes will air in future nor whether or not there's going to be a court case.
Now that the chips are down, the future of the show has literally become a slot machine of chance, a gamble from day to day.