eNCA, South Africa's most watched news channel, seems to have ended its African news bulletin, eNCA Africa Edition, seen on the channel between 9pm and midnight outside SA and between midnight and 6am on its South African feed.
The launch of eNCA Africa Edition coincided with the channel's rebrand from the eNews Channel to eNCA in August of 2012 when the channel launched on the UK's Sky satellite platform and also the online platform livestation.com.
The three hour bulletin was anchored by the likes of Lindy Mtongana, who moved from anchoring late nights and weekends on eNCA to anchoring the African bulletin for the international feed. She was joined by the likes of Nigerian Richard Nta, who though was meant to be the sports reporter, sat as main anchor quite often, and also new Africa 360 host, Sisonke Msimang.
The team was led behind the camera by the excellent eNCA Africa editor, Chris Maroleng, who recently left the channel. Whether his departure from eNCA has anything to do with the ending of the show is unkown.
Due to the show only being shown on the SA feed after midnight, eNCA was the only of the local news channels to broadcast new, though not live, news after midnight.
Signs that the show had silently ceased to be slowly started to appear: First the programming guide no longer listed it, then the overnight hours when the show traditionally aired in SA started re-airing whatever had aired on eNCA's SA feed during the 9pm-12am slot. The final sign that confirmed my suspision was when the likes of Lindy Mtongana, who had been used exclusively on the show started anchoring on eNCA again, I knew the show had ended.
At this point it is unclear whether eNCA Africa Edition will ever return, though I personally hope it does.
Though I am glad the likes of Lindy are back on eNCA after being shown exclusively aftr midnight for over two years, the addition of the eNCA Africa Edition anchors to the rotation of anchors that do weekends and late nights on the channel means that the likes of Fenly Foxen, Duduzile Ramele and Mabale Moloi are all going to be seen less due to having to squeeze so many on air anchors into a limited amount of hours.
*Overnight refers to the hours 12am-6am
**Late night refers to the hours 9pm-12am
(Forgive me for any errors in this post, but Im having to type this on my cellphone due to cable theft leaving me unable to access the internet from my pc)
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