COVERAGE REVIEW: News Channels Cover Jacob Zuma's State of the Nation Address

eNCA (simulcast on eTV), ANN7, SABC News(simulcast on SABC 2), along with CNBC Africa and Parliamentary Service all covered President Jacob Zuma's State of the Nation Address live on 17 June 2014

As expected, all news channels carried Jacob Zuma's SONA address live on Tuesday, June 17th.

ANN7

The biggest disappointment of the coverage must have been ANN7. After covering the previous SONA address and elections so well, their coverage this time around really took one step back.

Because the channel ran a two hour block of non-news from 2:30pm all the way to 5pm, the channel chose to air a general news bulletin in the 5pm slot whilst the other channels all started building up to the event. Their build up then started at 5:30pm with the usual anchor hosting Ricky Naidoo, their political editor, from their studios.

ANN7's Political Aditor, Ricky  Naidoo

At 6pm, prime time anchor Chantal Rutter dros took over with her panel in the studio, and together they all just seemed to over analyse the situation and did not seem to cover the event itself decently, instead opting to just continue an in studio debate while adding a few live shots for good measure.
 Senior political correspondent Hajra Omarjee was on the ground at parliament, but in the hour before the actual speech, they did not even have a satellite (or broadband, considering the channel doesn't mind poor picture quality for on location shots) with her, instead having to have had her phone in, with the phone even losing connection at times. They really dropped the ball on this one as she should have been anchoring from Cape Town like last time around.

Considering the amount of time this channel spends on political news, I must say it is rather odd that they continue to use the Parliamentary Service, a channel all DStv subscribers have access to, as their in parliament coverage and do not receive the 'clean' feed that other channels have, so you will see the logos of the parliamentary service on ANN7, all adding to an overall messy on air presenation considering the different graphic packages.

A more beautiful picture of Cantal Rutter Dros than this I have never seen

They were, however, the last channel to still be covering the event for a few minutes after 9pm, after all other channels have ceased their broadcasts something which they should be commended for. In the 24 hour news business, a channel has 24 hours a day to fill with news, so the longer you can keep live coverage going the better.

eNCA

eNCA's coverage was anchored by Iman Rappetti live from parliament. She was yet again joined by the guys from Power FM, this time Ursula Chhikane and Tim Modise. Andrew Barnes co-anchored News Day from 1pm-4pm live from Parliament as well.

Ursula Chikane of Power FM and Top Billing covered the Red Carpet as part of eNCA's coverage of the second State of the Nation Address of 2014

Ursula provided coverage from the red carpet, something which I must say was a welcomed addition considering usually its a journo that performs this duty yet now they had someone from the glam scene as Ursula is also a Top Billing presenter. Being a Top Billing presenter added a sense of credibility to her contributions to the overall coverage, even though the high quality of her inserts speak for themselves.

Tim Modise speaking to a listener during a Power FM live crossing as part of eNCA's State of the Nation Address coverage

I am personally not a fan of the Power FM inserts. Quite frankly I dislike it.When it comes to covering live events, the best thing to do is to cover it as best you can. Now these inserts not only stops coverage of the events nearly completely, it breaks the rhythm of the broadcast every time Iman crosses over to the radio station, taking about a minute to do the whole hand over, Tim Modise to welcome viewers back (and remind them they can tune in on Power FM), and to tell them to call in as well. This process is repeated every time they hand over to the radio station. Often the listener who called in is not providing opinion that deserves to be aired on a national platform either and just drags the whole thing out, forcing viewers like myself to just easily flip up to the next channel/s as I know I wont be missing much on eNCA.

Iman hosted two analysts in their little studio at Parliament, this time not over analysing things as much as they did in the past. I really dislike the trend on  South African broadcasting of having those large vertical banners on their set seen behind the analysists with the channel logo on. It seems extremely amateur hour as viewers can see which channel they viewing from the onscreen graphics of they could have had a monitor onscreen. Instead, they opt to narrow viewers' view of the happenings outside the window behind the analysts.

eTV's coverage, which started at 7pm had onscreen sign language interpreter on the right side of the screen. The picture on eTV was terrible. Not only was the picture letterboxed with black bars at the top and bottom of the screen, it was pillarboxed as well with black bars on either side of the screen, so the whole picture onscreen had a terrible box all around the picture.

While the other channels provided non stop rolling coverage of the events, eNCA found it okay to take a great load of ad breaks during their coverage, exculding the speech itself, vital time that could have been used to provide coverage. This included parts of the coverage not seen on eTT, so they were not forced to take so many ad breaks. At 8:24 pm, they found it in themselves to take a SIX MINUTE ad break and another four minute one at the top of the next hour, time the other channels used for live coverage.

SABC News
By far the channel with the best coverage of the event, SABC News' coverage was anchored by Vuyo Mvoku and Leanne Manas live from their studio at Parliament.

Leanne Manas and Vuyo Mvoku anchored SABC News' (simulcast on SABC 2) coverage of the State of the Ntaion Address

They got the mix right of keeping analysis to a minimal and live rolling commentary to a maximum right. Most of the time during the build up, the anchors' and guests' voices were just heard and not seen as they opted to keep pictures focussed on what was happening an explained to viewers what was going on and what they were seeing, along with naming people as they came in case viewers might not have known who they were. They had more reporters on the ground than any other news channel as well.

For some or another reason, SABC News had their camera on eNCA's Ursula as she interviewed Mmusi Maimane for quite a while

After the speech, they got response from all the major opposition parties before interviewing ANC members, something that has to be admired from the apparent voicepiece of the ANC.