SABC News (DStv 404) silently made adjustments to their schedule on Monday, 2 June 2014, with absolutely no announcement beforehand.
Their new prime time line up now kicks off with Business Review, hosted by Francis Herd, at 6pm, moving up from 8pm. This also means Francis' day now ends at the end of Prime Time News at 7:30pm, an hour earlier than when it used to, at 8:30pm. Francis was also the only anchor who mentioned the new slot for her show on Twitter, with the rest of the anchors not mentioning it at all.
Their flagship English bulletin, Prime Time News, hosted by Vabakshnee Chetty and Peter Ndoro, now starts at 6:30pm, losing the 6pm half hour. This show, initially, was born out of SABC 3's 1 hour News show at 6:30pm then expanding to include the earlier half hour when the channel launched. Now it is being scaled back to an hour again.
The 7:30pm Afrikaans bulletin stays unchanged.
In the 8pm slot is a newly launched 30minute English News Bulletin, aptly titled News at 8, that is meant to review the days top stories. The camera angles in this bulletin also resemble a more of a 'classic' news bulletin's camera angles, giving it a different feel compared to the earlier English slot done from the same studio.
The 8:30pm Sports Live stays unchanged.
Overall, this is a major improvement because prior to the changes, one had to wait from 7:30pm all the way to 11pm between English news bulletins on the channel. The 11pm news bulletin, Your World, is not live in any case so the channel basically could not provide fresh news in English after a very early 7:30pm. Now with the changes, live news ends an hour later at 8:30pm
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