Review: All News Channels Cover "Opening Of Parliament" Live

As expected, ANN7, eNCA and SABC News all covered the opening of Parliament live, to varying degrees.

SABC News' coverage was done from  both their Auckland Park Studios as well as their studios in Cape Town, starting with Eben Jansen's edition of Newsroom and continuing throughout the day ith the bvarious programming, though they took regular breaks to cover other news, even airing some taped programming, which I think should have been preempted today.

eNCA covered the events at parliament during what was their regular news day. During Morning News Today, Justice Malala joined Uveka Rangappa to build up to the events. The channel also had Paula Chowles providing live reports from parliament. They have provided the least amount of coverage of the event, including allowing a sport report to continue just before 4pm when Justice Mogoeng started announcing the results, breaking in just as he announced Baleka Mbete had won the election to be the new speaker of parliament. They then carried her remarks along with the proceedings on who would be the new president. After 4pm, Gareth Edwards was joined by the stellar Angelo Fick to break down the proceedings as they happened.

Undoubtedly, once again, the star of the political coverage is ANN7. In their Midrand studios, workhorse Hajra Omarjee had been on air from about 10am providing political analysis as the events unfolded until the president was elected. She was joined by the usual anchors of the various slots, though she remained on air while the rest just stayed for their usual hours. They took a new, less traditional, approach to their in studio analysis where the anchors, who included the likes of Gladys Sithole and Nzinga Quntu, had a sort of casual conversation with Hajra about the proceedings. When there wasn't anything said, she provided well done commentary not talking to much or over anyone as commentary at live events tend to be. The only problem I had with them was that while all the other channels were carried a 'raw' feed of  the proceedings at parliament, they carried the feed from the parliamentary service (which is available about 3 channels up from them), which included their graphics and poor picture quality. If they really planning on being the place to go for politics, they should get the clean feed and not seem amateurish is basically playing another tv channel on theirs, seen below.

 

All three channels carried the proceedings live on their respective online platforms, ANN7 through their channels directr live feed at their official website, SABC News on their Youtube channel, eNCA on their website and Youtube channel, though they had technical difficulties that required everyone to refresh the feed. They were also plagued with other problems, including lack of sound. That's the number one news channel in the country for you.

Coverage continued on all three channels into the night.