Election Coverage Review: ANN7

The youngest news channel in the country, ANN7, has really gained popularity for what has been very in depth election coverage. One could argue hat building up to the elections, they had more coverage than both eNCA and SABC News.

The channel, who has mainly previously unknown on air talent (along with quite a few people that jumped ship from the likes of eNCA), has really put on excellent coverage from the crack of dawn, when usual breakfast anchor Peter van Onselen carried the hours 6am to 10am after doing prime time anchoring just the night before. Their coverage consisted of a decent mix of broadcasting from their studios in Midrand and the IEC Election Centre. They also mainly used the graphics package associated with one of their main election programs, SA Decides



From 10-12pm, the host of their daily elections program, SA Decides, took over from him in the studio. I really liked that they had her play a pivotal role throughout their coverage. They really shouldn't drop the ball on this.

I was however disappointed in the role played by editor in chief Moegsien Williams' role in the coverage. He was just a panelist during the 12-2pm slot. Gladys Sithole, the channel's weekend prime time anchor was up next, anchoring from 2pm-4pm
Senior Anchor Chantal Rutter Dros anchored from the IEC Election Centre from 6pm to 9pm where she had an exceptional panel with her, along with senior political Hajra Omarjeee anchored from their studio. Hajra had a particularly busy day: part anchor, part analyst and part reporter. She really has been one of the bigger stars of this election.

Amazing pic from Hajra Omarjee's Twitter

At 9pm when the votes closed, they brought the too large and distracting election graphics that have been used for Election Tracker back, for the first hour or so just flashing zeros.

Desmond Tutu voting live. While he had usually been covered as a prominent politician would when they voted, this time around only ANN7 covered him voting live.

Overall, I must say that their panelists that they had on during the day weren't all that bright, though some were quite good and they had too few of them on to the point that they had been on air for quite a few hours and after a while one can notice that they have screen fatigue. But they more than made up for this on their live shots and inserts(even though some were done using internet connections, which I am not too fond of), including showing all of the bigger politicans voting live. They were also the only channel to show Desmond Tutu voting live as the others were showing a largely uneventful news briefing from the IEC Centre. They had exceptional shots of the voting lines from their chopper and reallyu gave you a on the ground feel of the elections. At the end of the night, they had a sort of highlights package of the days events that was well produced considering the amount of content that had to be editied in that short period of time. It is really hard to think that the same channel that was so horrendous just a few months ago could produce election coverage of the calibre that they did.

They were also able to get guests of quite a high caliber on the channel, including Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe and even Police Commisioner Riah Phiyega to give an update of if there had been any incidents thus far. Her interview was quite a while.

Watching their coverage of the build up to and post elections has really made me question whether Ann7 might just be the place to go for politics in the South African media. They have gained great momentum during the elections coverage, it is now up to them to build on it. Them building on it is going to be a news junkies dream to follow.