Saturday 20 May 2017

eNCA shakes up actuality programming

BackChat
eNCA has over the past few days announced new additions to the channel's already strong lineup of actuality programming.


BackChatis the channel's new show geared towards the country's youth encouraging them to challenge everything.

The weekly show is anchored by Busisiwe Gumede and Sia Leita.

BackChat premieres this Thursday evening at 9:30pm.

Unfortunately, the show is not live, and next Thursday's episode was already recorded the Friday before. A six day lag is massive in aever-changingng world and for a show that incorporates social media aspects.

The second new addition to the lineup is PolitiBureau, for which the channel did send out a detailed press release, found below:

"

Seasoned and senior political reporters, Thulasizwe Simelane and Xoli Mngambi bring their extensive field reporting experience to The PolitBureau studio.

The PolitBureau, hosted by Thulasizwe Simelane and Xoli Mngambi, makes its debut on eNCA this Sunday, 21 May at 10:30am. The show promises to go beyond the spin, analyse the policy, and reveal what’s really at stake in the battles between personalities and ideologies in South Africa’s political space.

eNCA Channel News Director Mapi Mhlangu says eNCA is dedicating its top talent to helping viewers navigate the choppy political waters of 2017. “Simelane and Mngambi have a record of asking the tough questions on issues that matter, of people who do not necessarily want to answer. They will now use this experience to examine South African politics on a weekly basis; what was said, who said it, what it means and sometimes what was not said, and why," she says.

Thulasizwe Simelane has more than 15 years’ experience in the media space and a regular stand-in anchor on the channel. “As a South African journalist, I feel privileged to live in a country where the media can still help citizens interpret the extraordinary political events of our time”, says Simelane. “In writing a history of our present, things look both strange and familiar. My experience as a journalist on the rest of the continent allows me to see South Africa at 23 in a special light. How do we learn from what has gone before, from our neighbours near and far, and avoid making the mistakes in Africa’s post-independence political history.”

Xoli Mngambi, who joined the station in 2008, has proven that he is ready to tackle a bigger anchoring role and the station sees his step up to The PolitBureau as a natural progression for the talented broadcaster. “I’ve been talking to politicians and ordinary people since the road to Polokwane. A decade later I am struck by the echoes, but I am also intrigued by how much has been forgotten and how much people have erased, willingly or unwittingly. To live through these events and be given the privilege to help tell these ordinary and extraordinary stories of our times on a platform like eNCA: I am honoured." says Mngambi.

Regular contributors to the show will include our team of top reporters; Karyn Maughan, Lester Kiewit, Nickolaus Bauer and Annika Larsen. The station has also secured the services of analysts, who will further enrich the show’s political offering.

The PolitBureau will premier this Sunday, 21 May, at 10:30am with a repeat at 7:30pm.

"


To make way for PolitiBureau, Maggs on Media vacates its long-held 10:30am slot for 11:30am, still on Sundays.

Tuesday 16 May 2017

eNCA announes new News Night anchors, tweaks schedule

New News Night anchors, Cathy Mohlahlana and Vuyo Mvoko
eNCA yesterday announced that Cathy Mohlahlana and Vuyo Mvoko will take over anchoring duties on News Night.

The two have been screen testing together since April during Cathy's long running midmorning slot.

On the opportunity, Mvoko said, "Cathy and I hope to rise to the challenge of telling the story as it unfolds."

Both have been tweeting and replying to congratulations messages from colleagues and the public since the announcement was made. It is perhaps their social media presence that will be their greatest asset going in to prime time. Both are perceived highly favourably online, with Cathy having over 45 thousand followers and Vuyo with 47 thousand followers on Twitter.

Mvoko is a former contributing editor at SABC News and actually hosted a prime time news show at the start of 2016. This show was pulled from the air after Mvoko did an entire show centered on the State of Capture report. He left the SABC not too long after as part of the #SABC8 and started freelancing with eNCA earlier this year.

Cathy is a long time eNCA reporter and anchor, occupying the midmorning slot since 2014. During the election that year, Cathy was one of the channel's main reporters from the IEC's elections result centre. The midmorning slot has been where most news breaks in South Africa and Cathy has anchored coverage solo during many major breaking news stories including the Oscar Pistorius trial, protests, and of course, as is now the norm, countless press conferences.

Overall, this is the perfect choice by the channel with both being highly regarded by the public, highly competent at anchoring and coming across with a wonderful screen presence.

Other changes to the channel include longrunning News Night anchor, Jeremy Maggs moving to News Day (1pm, eNCA) solo, with the current news Day team, Shahan Ramkissoon and Michelle Craig moving to Cathy's old 9am to 1pm slot.

Everything else remains unchanged.

RATINGS: Free to air highlights from April 2017

Below are the free to air news highlights for April. Just a reminder that at the start of the month, SABC2 and SABC3 both shifted news programming around as part of a schedule retweak.
  • Xhosa News (SABC1, 7pm): 4.615 million
  • Zulu News (SABC1, 7pm): 4.576 million
  • eNews Direct Headlines (etv, Sunday, 6pm): 2.367 million
  • Afrikaans News (SABC2, 6:30pm):1.373 million
  • Sesotho, Setswana, Sepedi News (SABC2, 8pm): 1.088 million
  • Venda, Tsonga News (SABC2, 5:30pm): 1.019 million
  • English News (SABC3, 6pm):638 978

RATINGS: 24 hour news channels for April

As seen above, here are the audience shares for the 24 hour news channels on DStv. Historically, it was eNCA's Patrick Conroy that took the brag and posted this image, but now that he doesn't manage the channel anymore, the new channel head posted the above private image for everyone to see.

As always, eNCA continues to hold above half of the market share, meaning that out of every two people watching news on DStv, one is watching eNCA. Looking at the comparison table, we can see that eNCA was actually below 50% in the preceding motnh, which is something I don't recall seeing before.

Both ANN7 and SABC News Channel are slowly building an audience as both channels are up quite a bit from a year ago.

However, we can see that though SABC News Channel and ANN7 grew, this growth has not been coming at the expense of eNCA. Instead, the international news and business news channels are suffering instead with all of them down sharply from what they were doing late last year when interest in the American election was high.

What should be most concerning is the absolutely poor performance from local business news channels. When it comes to Al Jazeera or BBC World News, they are okay with having such low viewership because their channels are available all around the world on different platforms to make up for poor performance in one location.

However, neither CNBC Africa or Business Day TV has the same cushion to protect them: DStv viewership is all they have and when no one watches them on DStv, there is no one watching them anywhere in the world.

Tuesday 2 May 2017

Ayanda-Allie Paine back at eNCA

Ayanda-Allie Paine has announced that she will be rejoining eNCA, this time as weekend breakfast anchor.

Paine. who hosted eNCA's weekday morning programme, Morning News Today, left eNCA to take up the position of newsreader at the much wider watched Morning Live (SABC2, SABC News Channel). She left that position in February 2016 for a role at Power FM (I suppose the cool radio station these days) before now announcing her return to eNCA.

This will, in fact, be eNCA's first ever weekend breakfast show as the channel just did one long unbranded rolling news bulletin on weekends with rotating anchors.

The show, which is titled 'Weekend Wake Up' will air both Saturday and Sunday mornings between 7am and 10am.

It is strange that someone as talented as Ayanda will be permanently allocated weekend hours when eNCA still has a massive void to fill during weekday prime time with both Jeremy Maggs and Iman Rappetti leaving the station. Either way, I'm personally very happy to have Ayanda back on screen.

Monday 24 April 2017

Liberty Radio Awards hghlights

Liberty Radio Awards – South Africa


South Africas premier radio awards show, the Liberty Radio Awards (formerly MTN Radio Awards), took place this past weekend. Here are some of the newsy highlights.

Radio 702 and Cape Talk's The Money Show won the award for best Business and Finance Show.

The award in the Field News Reporter category went to Kaya FM's Tunicia Phillips.

The winners in the best News and Actuality Show categories were Inanda FM's Izwe Nezalo (Campus and Community), Lotus FM's Walk the Talk (PBS) and Power FM's Power Update.

The winners for best Newsreader were Vow FM's Katleho Sekhotho (Campus), Hot 91.9 FM's Gladys Sithole, who was formerly a news anchor on ANN7, (Community), Nomsa Mdhluli from SAFM (PBS) and Tara Penny from EyeWitnessNews (Commercial).

Best Radio Documentary went to EyeWitnessNews' Through the Cracks - The Untold Story of Mbuyisa Makhubu.

Ms Cosmo from 5FM won in the category for Traffic Presenter.

Jeremy Maggs of eNCA (and Power FM) was entered into the Hall of Fame.

It was a good evening to be part of the Power FM family as the station won in the categories for Content Producer (Power Update - Neo Leeuw), Daytime show (Power Talk), Sports Show and Station Imaging as well.

To see the full list of winners, including who won Station of the Year, click HERE.

Thursday 13 April 2017

RATINGS: March2016 Free to air Highlights

Below are the peak viewership figures for South Africa's free toair news bulletins:
  • Zulu News (SABC1, 7pm): 4.324million
  • Xhisa News (SABC1, 7pm): 4.181 million
  • eNews Direct Headlines (Sunday 6pm) 2.542 million 
  •  Afrikaans News (SABC2, 6:30pm) 1.334 million
  • Seswati, Setswana, Sepedi news (SABC2, 8pm) 1.215 million
  • Venda, Tsonga News (SABC2, 5:30pm) 928 145
  • English News (SABC3, 6pm) 756 753 

Actuality/Documentary  Highights:
  • Speak Out (SABC2, Thursdays 9:30pm) 2.86 million 
  •  Return of the White Lion (SABC3, Sunday 5:30pm) 715330
  • Feast of the Predators (SABC3, Sunday 5:30pm) 662961
  • Dolphin Army (SABC3, Sunday 5:30pm) 658813

(Remember that SABC3 and SABC2 tweaked their schedules at the start of the month)

Thursday 6 April 2017

eNews Izindaba cancelled

eNews Izindaba
Though etv relaunched two of their free to air satellite channels this past week to much fanfare, not much noise was made about the cancellation of eNews Izindaba, which aired its last bulletin last Friday.


When eKasi+ made way for eExtra, the channel dropped most of its local content in favour of well-dated foreign content, which is going against the grain of what the rest of the industry is doing by increasing local output.

One of the shows that were cut was eNews Izindaba, the only South African-language news bulletin not produced by the SABC.

eNews Izindaba has seen many shifts over its short life span: It started on eKasi+ when that channel started at a time when etv still aired Sotho news in early prime time (and overall still had an appreciation for prime time news). Then etv decided that the Sotho news should be canceled as they decided to shake up their prime-time lineup to make way for a third soap, but moved the Zulu news bulletin over to etv as well which has a larger viewership footprint.

However, due to both the Zulu news bulletin and the moved English news doing badly in the ratings, the Zulu news was moved back to eKasi+ with both the channel and the news bulletin this past week getting canned.

Though producing a single news bulletin is not expensive considering the expensive news gathering operations are already covered by etv's broader news division, pumping out five episodes a week for the entire year does eventually lead to high costs, something which may not be justifiable based on the small footprint of OpenviewHD, coupled of course with the fact that there are no subscription fees to depend on.

Tuesday 4 April 2017

Vuyo Mvoko joins eNCA

The highly talented and experienced former SABC News contributing editor today resurfaced on broadcast news, this time for eNCA.

Mvoko was let go by the SABC last July for speaking out against the news organisation's editorial policy.

With both Jeremy Maggs and Iman Rappetti leaving eNCA's News Night soon, the channel does not have anyone experienced enough in house to fill their roles. Could Mvoko, who previously hosted a prime time news programme on SABC News Channel be filling the void left by them soon?

His current role ateNCA is 'Specialist Reporter,' the same title Karyn Maughn holds.

Various news personalities took to Twitter to congratulate him on the move. Here are some:
Former eNCA host,Eusebius McKaiser:
Former ANN7 anchor, Asanda Magaqa:

Eyewitness News Senior Reporter:

The news, uninterrupted

What happens when tremors are felt in studio whilst live on the air? Your conversation continues uninterrupted of course:


But seriously though, talk about a cool reaction. Makes one sadder thatIman is leaving soon.

Friday 24 March 2017

ANN7 launches Consumer Guard

ANN7 (DStv 405) has announced another new show in the channel's current expansion of current affairs programming, Consumer Guard.

The show will focus on consumer rights and issues relating to that, highlighting consumer rip-offs, market collusion, and price fixing. It aims to inform, educate and give guidance as to what consumers can do to extend the value of their rand.

The weekly show will expose businesses that are colluding within the various industries, making it difficult for consumers to afford basic necessities.

Former Generations actor, Palesa Madisakwane‏ (who has had a rather odd week on social media) will host. She has been anchoring on ANN7 for a few months already.

ANN7 News Editor, Abhinav Sahay says: “On the first episode, the show tackles the issue of cellphone companies and their services. It aims to answer the question 'Are South Africans getting their money's worth when it comes to their cellphone networks?”

Consumer Guard premieres on Saturday afternoons at 2:30pm from March 25th, with repeats on Sunday afternoons at 3:30pm.

SABC3 schedule shakeup: Big news and actuality shifts and cuts

Image result for sabc3
SABC3 this past week announced a new 'autumn schedule' (just anther name for a shakeup) which sees major changes for nearly all the channel's news and actuality programmes. here are the highlights:


The Prime Time News bulletin moves half an hour earlier
The channel's main English news bulletin, Prime Time News with Francis Herd and Peter Ndoro, moves thirty minutes earlier to 6pm. This now moves it out of direct competition with the only other prime-time English news bulletin, etv's eNews Direct.

Though this might disturb the gradual build in audience the bulletin has seen, it is not necessarily bad, in fact its good programming from the SABC: From 5:30pm daily, the SABC will now have at least one news bulletin available on its free to air broadcasts (and takes the English and Afrikaans bulletins out of direct competition with each other) at any given time until 7:30pm. That's two hours of nonstop free to air primetime news cascaded across their three free to air news channels.

One thing we don't know from this change is how it will affect the business news bulletin that currently airs in its slot on SABC News Channel. SABC3's bulletin is just a simulcast of SABC News Channel, which currently airs a business-centric bulletin at 6pm. Whether that simply shifts later or gets canceled all together is not yet known.

This is also not the first shift for the bulletin that used to air at 8pm way back in the day. After an extended period at 7pm, the bulletin was shifted to 6pm as it could no longer compete directly with what at the time was a very highly rated news bulletin on etv (those ratings have absolutely plummeted since being shifted to 6:30pm). The bulletin was then extended for an hour to 7pm, before losing its first 30 minutes again, resulting in it airing in its current 6:30pm slot.

Expresso loses half an hour
 SABC3's breakfast show, Expresso (which just last weekend won Best Variety Show at the SAFTA's), will be losing 30 minutes of air to return back to being a two and a half hour show. However, the half hour being cut is the 6am half hour (to make way for a kiddies block) and not the recently added 8:30am half hour.

This means that Expresso, which once was the first breakfast show on air daily back when it started, going live at 5:30am, will now be the last breakfast show on any South African channel to go on air in the morning. Though that may be considered a negative for a news-centric show, Expresso is not that, they are a laid back chat show and cutting their least profitable half hour is not a bad thing.

Deutsche Welle is back
After silently replacing the German news service's broadcast on SABC2 with SABC News, DW, which is an international news service based in Germany, is back on the air on the SABC, now airing between 11:30pm and 2am daily.

Though it is not bad to have a massive two and a half hours  of fresh news content every evening in a time when the channel is used to airing reruns, airing DW isin contravention of whatever policy the SABC has that allowed it to cancel The Big Debate, which has subsequently moved to etv: That of the SABC not airing news content that it does not have editorial control over.

SABC News reruns
After DW goes off the air, overnights continue with SABC News content. It is uncertain what will happen to the SABC News' overnight feed on SABC2 as it makes no sense for  both channels to be airing the same thing at the same time for over three hours.

Afternoon Express and Real Talk with Anele swap slots
Afternoon Express now gets a slot in the actual afternoon and not the early evening at 4pm while Real Talk with Anele, which does generate a massive amount of social media buzz, now gets the lucrative 5pm slot where it can be sampled by an even larger potential audience.

Trending SA moves earlier, loses Fridays, loses reruns
The channel's relatively late night show, Trending SA, moves half hour earlier to 9:30pm, a timeslot when more people are actually still watching tv, meaning it no longer goes off air at 11pm.
In addition, it loses its Friday night slot, a night when most tv shows have lower viewership in any case.
The show also now completely vacates the 12pm slot, where it has been airing as a rerun since being moved from airing original episodes then. In its place are other reruns and... Hollywood News (why not).

Current Affairs
Special Assignment now moves to Monday's at 9pm, where it can compete with eNCA's Justice Factor for social media buzz (let's be honest, social media buzz, which does not generate cash, is a major factor considered now when scheduling is compiled).
Interface gets canceled completely in favour of celebrity stuff.

Finally, Funatix, the tween day time show that airs when children arein school, is now completely cancelled.

The rest of the channel's changes is just a shuffling of daytime reruns.

2017 SAFTAs: ZANews wins big... again

Image result for zanews safta

The 2017 edition of the SAFTAs took place this past week and, as we are all now used to, SA's only satirical news programme, ZANews Puppet Nation, won big once again.

The categories the show won are:
Best TV Comedy
Best Achievement in Directing - Comedy (Alex Fynn & Johannes Theodorus Vermaak )
Best Achievement in Post Production Sound Design - TV Comedy (Neil Benjamin)
Best Achievement in Art/Production Design - TV Comedy (Catherine Anne Jacot-Guillarmod, Racine Tanya Williams & Simone Rossouw)

With the show consistently receiving recognition for its work, it is surprising that it has not yet jumped to a television channel with a much bigger reach or another channel has not at least attempted to steal them away from StarSat. Also, consider the fact that they produce their show for a DStv audience and not a StarSat audience: They frequently make fun of news programming that is available exclusively on DStv. For example, one of their puppet co-hosts is Justice Malala. He is a personality seen only on eNCA which is available only on DStv so one can't expect the StarSat audience to connect with this character they don't really see too often. 

Yes, they do upload their episodes in their entirety for free on Youtube, but very few people find these episodes as very few know they exist in the first place. 

Other SAFTA highlights include:
 Nobody's Died Laughing winning best documentary film,
ZANews' sister show, Point of Order winning best game show,
SABC3's breakfast show, Expresso winning Best Variety Show, 
50/50 winning Best Magazine Show, 
Special Assignment's 'Spieners' episode beating out two Carte Blanche episodes for Best Current Affairs Actuality Programme

Friday 17 March 2017

Nzinga Qunta joins SABC News Channel

Former ANN7 Prime anchor, Nzinga Qunta is back on our screens in a regular role, now anchoring the SABC News Channel's Midday Report and, by consequence (due to simulcasting), SABC3's News at 1.


She has been in the role since the middle of February but I have only recently been able to confirm the move is not a temporary arrangement.

Since leaving ANN7 back in June 2015, Qunta has become a mother and planned to be a stay at home mom, but as she tweeted today, the news bug bit and she could not resist a return to screens (@NzingaQ: I was but I missed news and life changes 😬).

Nzinga brings SABC News an asset very few other on-air personalities on any news channel have: the ability to organically connect with younger people on social media and cleverly try to convert these tweets to viewers. She engages with her over 26 000 Twitter followers as if she is just another one of them and not some news person just delivering the same news in the same way just on another platform.

Though the 1pm hour is business centric, having such a strong social media user anchoring during the afternoon is an added benefit during hours when the things trending online usually is a direct result of live broadcasts happening during these hours (Parliamentary sessions, press conferences, court proceedings, etc).

Qunta is also a former Channel O presenter, presenting the channel's then flagship show, O-boma from 2007 to 2009 (Remember that show? It feels like a real lifetime ago).  She holds a BA degree from Wits in English Literature and Law.

Both Iman Rappetti and Jeremy Maggs leaving News Night

Image result for jeremy maggs iman rappetti
eNCA has unexpectedly announced that both news anchors of News Night, Senior Anchors Jeremy Maggs and Iman Rappetti, will be leaving the channel's prime time news bulletin, News Night.


The reason for both anchors leaving is that neither wants to work at night anymore. Though prime time is where any journalist wants to be considering its much larger audience, the veteran anchors are no longer willing to work their long days: both are presenters on PowerFM in the morning, then anchors at night.

Rather poetically (or coincidentally), burnout due to working radio and tv is the exact same reason why News Night's first female anchor, Redi Thlabi (then Redi Direko), left the job as well.

In recent months the two have been increasingly taking off days as well. This reached a stage where neither anchors on a Friday night and during the rest of the week it is mostly only one of them on duty.

Maggs leaves the slot after nearly nine years there, while Rappetti leaves after five. The five years that the duo have been together precedes the existence of the country's other two news channels, SABC News Channel and ANN7 and have been the constant in eNCA's lineup tweaks over the past few years, including a name change.

“It has been a heady, tough, rewarding, crazy ride,” says Iman.

“Both Jeremy and Iman have been key to the success of eNCA,” says Channel News Director Mapi Mhlangu. “We thank them for their loyalty, hard work and brilliance in bringing powerful news stories to our screens. This is a big change for the channel and our viewers, but also an opportunity to showcase talent in our newsroom and beyond.”

No word yet on who will replace the duo, but eNCA's bench of good enough anchors is not that deep so if anchors in other slots get the promotion, the channel will still have to look outside the group for new anchors in those slots. (Personally, my bets are on Joanne Joseph and Gareth Edwards, as that reduces disruption on the rest of the schedule and doesn't pull any of the quality reporters  from the field, but let's see).

Their final evening on News Night is expected in May, closer to the channel's birthday.

Thursday 9 March 2017

Supersport Blitz to broadcasst in HD

Image result for supersport blitz
It was announced at the MultiChoice upfronts today that Supersport Blitz, South Africa's only 24/7 sports news channel, will start broadcasting in the high definition format soon.


Thee channel now joins seven other of Supersport's countless channels in broadcasting in High Definition. the switchover will happen later this month.

In addition, on the SuperSport front at least, the broadcaster noted that they will be launching a 24/7 eSports channel that will eventually broadcast domestic eSports tournaments as well, like the big ones held at the rAge expo. eSports is when we watch other people play video games.