Peter Stemmet has left ANN7

Peter Stemmet is the next high-profile departure from ANN7. He left the channel at the end of November (please excuse the late post).


He joined ANN7 at inception, as a presenter of GameOn! in its first form and also the sports anchor on ANN7 Prime. In addition, he occasionally served as fill in general news anchor and most recently presented ANN7's 'Race for the White House,' which was the channel's weekly news recap on the US Elections.

He is also a big time sports blogger.

Prior to joining ANN7, Stemmet was a sports anchor at eNCA and is also a former South African Sports Journalist of the Year. He was one of a few journos that made the jump from eNCA to help start up ANN7.

He leaves ANN7 to be a sports anchor for Al Jazeera English, based in Doha.

eNCA abruptly cancels Meet the Media

As quickly as it came, it is now gone. eNCA has abruptly canceled the excellent Meet the Media with Eusebius McKaiser.

The show, which took to the air on July 3rd this year, was launched in response to then SABC COO, Hlaudi Motsoeneng, canceling all SABC programming analysing the South African media landscape.

Not even Mckaiser knows exactly why the show was cancelled. He responded to a tweet with, "Sorry guys I'm as much in the dark as you. Thanks for tuning in. @AntonHarber [eNCA editor in chief] might explain to you."

In a statement about the show's cancellation, eNCA says the show has "ended its current season on eNCA. In the new year, eNCA will be exploring new concepts for their programming to align with 2017's political calendar. eNCA looks forward to working with Eusebius on new projects in 2017"

These new projects the channel aims to launch will be announced towards the end of February.

Comedy Central Africa shifts the Daily Show

Comedy Central Africa (DStv 122) has announced that from January 4th,  it is shifting The Daily Show with Trevor Noah's timeslot from 9pm to 9:55pm.

The show has been airing at 9pm since Trevor Noah took over as host. Prior to that the late night chat show was broadcast in actual late night (after 11pm).

Shifting the show, which takes way too many production breaks compared to similar late night shows,  means that Comedy Central Africa can now put together a stronger prime-time lineup instead of having to dedicate 9pm, the heart of prime time, to one show daily.

Peter van Onselen leaves ANN7

Peter van Onselen, the long running presenter of ANN7's breakfast show, Vuka Africa signed off today for the last time.


He leaves ANN7 to go back to his former broadcast home, etv, where he used to be a bulletin editor. It is not yet clear exaclty what role he would now have at etv/eNCA.

Though ANN7 experienced countless changes over the last three years, the one constant in the equation wass that Peter would be seen anchoring in the morning. In addition to anchoring the morning hours van Onselen has also contributed greatly to the channel's coverage of bigger events like the elections.

On his last bulletin with the channel, Peter tweeted, "My final hour on @ANN7tv . Big highs, big lows. Watch this space...see you on the other side... and Thank You for your support. #3years OUT ."

This means that Express Lunch's Abigal Visagie is the only on air anchor still at ANN7 who has been with the channel since launch.

It is unclear at this moment who will take over Peter's role on Vuka Africa.

Debora Patta reports from inside Aleppo

Debora Patta, CBS News' Foreign Correspondent usually based in Africa has been reporting out of the war-torn Syrian city of Aleppo over these last few days.

This as the Syrian army continues to make strides in reclaiming the City.

Very few American news organisations ever send their own reporters to locations like Aleppo, instead opting to use stock footage and voice overs for reporting that feels very disconnected from the people on the ground.

However, with Patta on the ground, CBS News users get a very real and hands-on experience of what things are like in the City, like in the above picture where she takes viewers inside one of the tunnels once controlled by the rebels.

You can follow Debora's esperience on her Twitter account, @debora_patta

Guptas tried to buy stake in SABC News Channel

The inquiry into the state of affairs of the public broadcaster began this past week. Among the more interesting revelations of the inquiry this past week was that the Gupta family attempted to buy a stake in the SABC's 24-hour news channel, SABC News Channel (DStv 404).

This is according to Phil Molefe, who was the group's head of news at one point in time and acting CEO thereafter.

Though it would be less controversial if they tried to buy a stake in, say, SABC1, attempting to buy a stake in the public broadcaster's news channel is something that should be raising more concern than what it is. You cannot separate the 24-hour news channel from the newsroom and news gathering operations.

There is also absolutely no way that trying to buy shares in a news channel can be pure of intention. News channels have extremely high operating costs and are generally not profitable to run. Organisations around the world run news channels mainly for the prestige and the only way CNN was able to make a reported $1billion dollars in profit this year is because of record high viewership driving up ad revenue and transmission fees from different pay-tv platforms not only in the US but around the world.  Now consider the fact that SABC News Channel's only income would be transmission fees from Multichoice (ad revenue is small for pay tv channels in SA).

What is the return on investment the Guptas could have received? Editorial influence of the country's largest news organsisation?

This bit of information also adds new perspective on the launch of ANN7. South African went five years with having just one news channel (eNCA), but went a mere three weeks with having two as ANN7 went on air in what seemed to be a rushed launch just 21 days after SABC News Channel went on air.

ANN7 is part of Infinity Media, which has among its shareholders the same Gupta family that tried to buy a stake in a public news channel.

[THIS ARTICLE IS DIFFERENT IN STYLE COMPARED TO MY RECENT WORK. FEEDBACK WOULD BE APPRECIATED]

RATINGS: November 2016 free to air highlights

Below are the most watched free to air news bulletins for the month of November:

• Xhosa News (SABC1): 3 802 629
• Zulu News (SABC1): 3 757194
• eNews Direct Headlines (etv): 2 291 601
• eNews Direct [Sunday broadcast] (etv): 2 095 938
• Afrikaans News (SABC2): 1 483 336
• English News (SABC3): 699 735

Palesa Madisakwane joins ANN7 as anchor

Actress Palesa Madisakwane joined ANN7 last week as a weekday anchor. She will also act as producer for the channel that desperately needs seasoned and experienced individuals from the tv world.

Prior to joining the news channel, Madisakwane acted in soaps airing on SABC1, etv and Mzansi Magic.

Though I am usually skeptical about non-news people joining a news channel, Madisakwane has not been bad. She comes across better than most ANN7 anchors and on social networks she comes across as enthused by her work and actively markets ANN7 to her vast social followers, something most other ANN7 personalities don't do as they too busy gracing the red carpet.

Joining ANN7 last week meant she could attend the company's Christmas party, but also likely means she will be on air for the entire festive season, which is one of the perks of joining a news channel at this point of the year.

She has taken to social networks to talk about her joining the channel, stating that she is bidding farewell to acting and that she looks forward to the career elevation this journey brings her.

Robin Adams leaves Al Jazeera

Thanks everybody for watching.

Forgive the poor audio, but here's @RobinAdamsSport signing off for the last time on @AlJazeera. Farewell to TV's most enthusiastic man 😢 pic.twitter.com/LYJWVxqYVe

— Kamahl Santamaria (@KamahlAJE) November 24, 2016

Those were the words Cape Town born sports anchor, Robin Adams, used to sign off from Al Jazeera  English (DStv 406) for the last time after a six and a half year tenure at the Doha-based news network.

Prior to joining Al Jazeera, Adams was a sports anchor at what is known today as eNCA, anchoring and reporting mainly from Cape Town.

No word yet on what the talented anchor has planned next, but he is returning back home. But before that, he got to have another taste of home as Nandos Qatar sponsored his farewell party at Al Jazeera.

Since signing off for the last time, he has been endlessly retweeting farewells and congratulations on a career well done.

RATINGS: October DStv news channels

Courtesy once more of Patrick Conroy's Twitter account (even though he no longer works at eNCA), here are the audience shares for DStv's news channels:

The biggest observation from this is the three channels that pulled a 0% audience share. Having three channels have 0% pulls the credibility of the whole audience measurement poll into question. One has to wonder whether the sample size used for these polls are large enough and, more important, reflective enough of the demographics of DStv viewers. DStv has been growing rapidly in recent years, which has meant rapid changes in the demopgraphics of subscribers. Whether these changes are captured in this data is now highly questionable.

Ignoring the above, here are the highlights:

• eNCA is once again comfortably holding more than half of the audience share. 
• SABC News Channel is getting closer and closer to getting to that 20% mark. The channel's slight tweaks and highly simplified schedule is starting to payoff well.
• Thanks to the circus of the US elections inching close to its peak in October, along with multiple debates, CNN just shot up rapidly to third place, just below 10%, which I would think is near to an all time best for the channel since the 2013 expansion of the domestic news channel offering.
• ANN7's audience share for October worryingly declined. Why is it worrying? The channel's South African of the Year Awards show, which usually leads to a ratings bump did nothing. Personally, I think this is a result of the Awards being branded very poorly this year (Dropping the elegent and understandable 'I Am South African' brand in favour of the cheap sounding and appearing 'SATY Daily Show') and weakly scheduled.
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DStv pulls the plug on [ED]

Get ready to be dumbed down. DStv has announced that they are not renewing the contract of South Africa's only locally ran and owned documentary channel, [ED].

The channel, which is available on channel 190 (just one flip away from DStv's most popular channel overall, SABC1, believe it or not), will cease broadcasting on December 1st.

DStv has no plans to replace [ED], which is now the fifth channel in DStv's channel cuts, following the culling of CBS Action, CBS Drama, True Movies and AMC. The latter channels were cut as a result of DStv being so concerned about subscribers that they wanted to reduce the amount of repeats subscribers are exposed to (DStv seriously has among the country's best spin doctors on hand). The reason for [ED] being cut is simply that the channel's contract wont  be renewed. That's it.

[ED], which was run by Urban Brew studios, featured a large slate of original domestic programming, mainly providing a platform for independent documentaries and self-produced informative chat shows. In addition, it featured a decent amount of quality foreign documentaries at a time when DStv's "documentary channels" prefers giving swamp people a platform.

This marks the first time that DStv has cut a channel with such a large amount of local content and, given how they are cutting costs and channels left and right (Please ignore the lavish and expensive party they hosted last week for M-Net's birthday), one has to wonder exactly how close ANN7 was to being cancelled when those rumours arose a few months back.

Roberto Carletti, the channel's station manager, says, "Thanks to our loyal [ED] viewers and advertisers for their continued support over the years. Through our content, our viewers have remained curious and have been inspired."

While DStv continues to cut channels in South Africa, they continue to lower prices and add channels in the rest of the continent. Think about that.

[Personally,  thnk one thing the channel could have done better is marketing. Its programming was good but it was not marketed very well to average viewers]

The disappearing case of the CNN logo...

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Look at the pictures in this article. There are two things common in all of them: All of them are covering protests and all of them are CNN reporters.

When covering breaking news CNN reporters on the ground usually make it clear that they are from CNN: they wear the CNN jacket, their microphone bears CNN branding and  they usually wear CNN caps as well.

But notice that this is no longer the case. In the face of how the media got this election terribly wrong, and that trust in the media is at its all time lowest and sinking further, CNN seems to no longer be comfortable having their reporters be visibly identifiable by protestors.

By having their reporters go unmarked into protests as if they were local news reporters (In the US, local news has a trust level and is less controversially perceived compared to the big cable news networks like CNN and Fox News), CNN is acknowledging their own role in creating the situation as it is and are hedging against potential retaliation from the protestors.

In prior protests relating to issues the media had a smaller role in creating, when protestors identified someone from CNN, they would often start chanting 'F**k CNN' live on air or even try to intimidate the reporter.

RATNGS: October free to air hghlights

That time of the month again when we get to look back at the prior month's news and actuality ratings highlights:

• Once again the SABC's Xhosa news topped the list, pulling 4.15 million viewers at its peak.
• The Zulu news bulletin (SABC1) is on its tail as always, pulling 4.07 million viewers.
• The next most watched news bulletin, in a distant third, is SABC2's Afrikaans news bulletin with 1.3 million viewers.
• SABC2's 6:30pm multilingual news bulletin is next, with 1.15 million viewers. 
• SABC3's English news bulletin continues to build an audience, now pulling 922 000 viewers at peak. 
• The one minute eNews Direct Headlines on Sunday evenings continue to pull strong numbers for etv, attracting a bit more than 2.6 million viewers at its peak. 
• For the frst time in its history, the standard half-hour edition of eNews Direct, though the Sunday edition only, featured on etv's most watched programmes list. This is a direct result of being sandwiched between the SA Got Talent performance show and results show, both of which pull in excess of 3 million viewers. This eNews Direct bulletin pulled 2.087 million viewers, making it the third most watched news bulletin.
  

• Speak Out continues to be the country's most watched actuality attracting a peak of 2.346 million viewers.

Stray observations:

• DStv had an open weekend for their three main series channels, M-Net, M-Net Edge and Vuzu Amp. Not one channel saw a bump in viewership.
• An American music awards show disguised as an African one, the MTV Africa Music Awards, aired in October. However because it aired across three tv channel's (MTV, MTV Base and on tape delay on etv), it did not make the most watched list for DStv nor etv. News channel ANN7 s hosting their South African of the Year Awards this month. Lets see if they can make the list. 

e.tv launches own lunchtime news bulletin

e.tv this past week launched its own lunchtime news bulletin separate from the News Day bulletin that has been simulcasting with eNCA for the past eight years.


The bulletin, broadcast from Johannesburg, is anchored by Duduzile Ramela from the same studio used for eNews Direct, which she also anchors. This means that she goes on air for the first time at 1pm and signs off at 7pm, quite a long workday. With e.tv looking to cancel prime time news, this is probably where the eNews Direct team will move to permanently once they get cancelled (It must really suck producing a news bulletin you know the channel you on doesn't want).

For the last few months (and prior to that as well but with less consistency) breaking news coverage on eNCA meant that News Day could not start at the top of the 1pm hour, leading to e.tv having a separate traditional news bulletin, anchored by the usual News Day team with Cathy Mohlahlana having to work overtime on eNCA to cover the breaking news.


Having a separate bulletin also means that neither eNCA or e.tv has to end the bulletin with the line, "For our eNCA viewers, News Day continues after the break but for those of you watching on e.tv this is goodbye."

eNCA moves News Day to Johannesburg

Starting this week, eNCA moved its long-running Cape Town based news bulletin, News Day, to Johannesburg.

This comes as the news channel continues to scale back its Cape Town operations in order to control costs. Just last week the channel laid off long-time Cape Town based anchor, Amy McIver, who co-anchored the news bulletin for the last few months. Others based in the Cape Town bureau have been told to either relocate to Johannesburg or be retrenched.

News Day, which is older than even the channel it broadcasts on, started airing on 4 October 2007 as Lunchtime Live based in Cape Town at a time when e.tv was still expanding news hours on the free to air a channel. Being based in Cape Town meant that the anchors could simply drive, or even walk, to parliament to cover events happening there.

Moving the bulletin to Johannesburg also means that not one of the three South African news channels have news bulletins originating from anywhere outside that city. The move also means that the handover from Cathy Mohlahlana to News Day will be much more smoother as breaking news in her slot often overran into News Day's slot, which required a long ad break to get the Cape Town anchors up.

It is unclear how the change affects News Day's actual anchor, Michelle Craig, who is currently on maternity leave. Would she move to Johannesburg to coanchor the bulletin with Shahan Ramkissoon, who is anchoring it solo now, or would she simply go back to being a weekend anchor.

Amy MacIver leaves eNCA/eTV

Amy MacIver announced that she would be leaving eNCA today, the same day she actually signs off for the last time. eTV, lacking taste, did not even mention beforehand that she was leaving, in contrast to the hero's send off Andrew Barnes received.

The reason for her leaving? She was retrenched from the organisation which continues to scale back its Cape Town operations.

The emotional Amy shed a tear at the bottom of the first half hour of News Day when she said goodbye to her eTV viewers for the last time (the first half hour of the lunchtime broadcast is simulcat on eTV). That is where she got her start with the organisation way back in 2005. When she joined eTV in 2005, there was no eNCA yet, just the news bulletins on eTV, back when eTV cared about news. She regularly did the Early Edition news bulletins (back when it was in English), the Late Edition news bulletin (back when eTV cared about news) and the weekend editions of eNews Prime Time (and subsequently eNews Direct Weekends), all of which originated from Cape Town.

Just last month she was temporarily promoted from weekend anchor to News Day anchor, filling in for Michelle Craig who is still on maternity leave. In 2015 she also produced and presented eNCA's magazine show, Earth Watch. Occasionally on big news events, like on election day, she would do reporting as well.

COVERAGE NOTES: Mid-Term Budget Speech

Finance Minister, Pravin Gordhan, delivering the 2016 Mid-term budget Speech Address on ANN7

Finance Minister, Pravin Gordhan, delivering the 2016 Mid-term budget Speech Address on CNBC Africa

Finance Minister, Pravin Gordhan, delivering the 2016 Mid-term budget Speech Address on eNCA

Finance Minister, Pravin Gordhan, delivering the 2016 Mid-term budget Speech Address on The Parliamentary Service

Finance Minister, Pravin Gordhan, delivering the 2016 Mid-term budget Speech Address on The SABC News Channel

The Minister of Finance today revealed the Mid-Term Budget speech. Below are coverage notes from the domestic news channels. A special note: This will be eNCA's first budget speech broadcast in years without Andrew Barnes who usually anchored the broadcast.

12pm
Wall-to-wall coverage commences on both eNCA and SABC News Channel.

eNCA has Gareth Edwards filling in for Cathy Mohlahlana in Johannesburg with Jeremy Maggs holding things down at their makeshift parliamentary studio. He is joined by analysts Karima Brown and . Leigh-Anne Jansen, Athi Mtongana and Annika Larsen is following the protests

SABC News Channel has anchor Devan Murugan in Cape Town with Natasha Thorp in studio . The beginning of the 12pm hour featured Leanne Manas' interview with the Finance Minister from this morning's edition of Morning Live. Vannesa Poonah is covering the protests outside parliament for the channel.




ANN7 is not only having a regular bulletin, but they seem to be making a bigger story than the other channels about the protest surrounding Senzo Meyiwa's murder investigation. There is nothing wrong with providing in-depth coverage to the story, but they providing this in-depth coverage at the cost of two stories much more relevant to South Africans: The budget speech and student protests.

The business channels also have regular programming.

Natasha Thorp and Devan Murugan anchored the SABC News Channel's coverage of the 2016 Mid-term Budget Address

1pm
ANN7 has and BizPulse anchor and business editor, Clive Ramathibela-Smith, and economist, Francois Stofberg in studio  joining Abigail Visagie in studio telling. Clive noted that this may be the most important mid term budget speech ever, considering not only the student protests but looming ratings downgrades.Nasiphi Same is outside parliament.

eNCA and eTV are not simulcasting their 1pm bulletins. Jeremy Maggs continues to provide live coverage from parliament with Shahan Ramkissoon and Amy McIver in studio anchoring News Day currently airing only on eTV. Magggs and his panel are covering the budget wall-to-wall whilst News Day is covering the budget as only one of their stories. At 1:19pm, Jeremy Maggs was joined by Basic Education Minister, Angie Motshekga. Even though eTV will be airing the Budget Speech at 2pm, the stop broadcasting news at 1:30pm, instead opting to play cheap filler programming for thirty minutes.

Abigail Visagie anchored pre-budget speech coverage on ANN7

SABC News Channel's coverage also reduces its focus on the budget speech in the 1pm hour as this hour is simulcast on SABC3 and thus has to provide an all round news bulletin. At 1:29pm, both eNCA and SABC News channel broke the news that Minister Pravin Gordhan has exited parliament to address the student protestors, before  both cut to commercial break. Soon after, SABC news Channel had a camera basically at the Finance Minister, catching an exchange between him and a student.

At just after 1:30pm, CNBC Africa started their own live coverage of the event from their studio.

2pm
eNCA interrupted Kariema Brown midsentence to play the introduction to the coverage. Jeremy Maggs continued speaking in the background before he too was cut mid-sentence to go to commercial break, while their coverage continued unharmed on eTV.

SABC News' coverage shifted to being anchored entirely from a makeshift studio outside of Cape Town with Devan Murugan anchoring.

The Minister of Finance delivered the Mid-Term Budget Speech from 2:05pm

For the first time for as long as i can remember, the Midterm Budget Speech Address is not available on one free to air SABC Channel. Instead, SABC1 and SABC2 are showing reruns while SABC3 is playing a live program for school children hat should still be in school at this time. Free to air viewers are therefore forced to watch it on eTV and not on the public broadcaster. For some reason, the address is being streamed on the SABC's main Youtube channel and not the SABC News one, as if that will make a difference because if people can't afford low cost DStv, how on earth do you expect them to be a able to afford uncapped internet to watch the address?

Vuzu AMP adds new 'late night' chat show to schedule

Vuzu AMP (DStv 103)today announced that addition of a new 'late night' talk show to the channel's schedule. The words 'late night' are in quotation marks because the show airs at 9:30pm, hardly considered to be a late night slot.

The show, called The V-Table, will be hosted by probably the foundation of the '#Vuzu5,'  Nomuzi Mabena, who will be joined by YouTube sensation Moshe Ndiki, and entertainment king Larry ‘Larryngitis’ Nhlane.

For now, the show will air for 30 min on a Monday evening from November 7th and aims to look at the week’s breaking and trending news, along with gossip and varying perspectives on popular culture. Its format will include celebrity interviews and commentary that is entertaining and unfiltered, focusing on past and current events in the form of a late night roundtable discussion.

In other words, it wont be much different to SABC3's late night show, TrendsSA.

“We feel that it’s important for us to engage with our fans on what’s trending and making news, in a way only we know how – with that unmistakable VUZU AMP twist. Each presenter brings their own unique flair to ‘the table’, so this, combined with the hot topics each week is bound to make for fun, always provocative, viewing.”

All of Vuzu AMP's domestically produced content either simulcasts with Vuzu or airs on Vuzu, which is available on DStv's smaller bouquets compared to Vuzu AMP's Premium-only footprint, a few months after its premiere airing. It will be interesting to see what will happen to this show in this regard as news, even if it is pop culture, has a very limited shelf life.

SABC3 shelves 'Larger Than Life,' moves 'Trending SA'

SABC3 has tweaked its ambitious new schedule, less than 4 months after rolling out its slate of new local unscripted content.



It seems as if the channel's late night talker, 'Larger Than Life,' is officially canceled. It does not appear on the channel's schedule for the foreseeable future and when show host, Jason Goliath, was asked on Twitter where the show was, he simply replied, 'We're Done,' with a few negative looking emojis after that [Apparently they 'emojis' and not 'emoticons' as I've been calling them].

Daytime show, Trending SA, which airs at the ungodly hour of midday when everyone is at work or school and not even on lunch break, takes over the 10pm hour from Larger than Life. The tone of the show, which recently saw one of the hosts, Pabi Moloi, will shift from a what is happening now to  a what happened today format. Though mainly a chit chat show, Trending SA has been a very enjoyable news show [at least personally] at midday providing updates on things like student protests and other big news stories as long as they trended with as much depth as a news bulletin but in a more relaxed manner.

This also meant that the show was a sort of a news bulletin for those individuals without pay tv or internet access before the 1pm lunch time news bulletins went on air. I hope it will continue being that informative at 10pm with a larger audience available, especially now that no free to air channel has a late night news bulletin.

No official word on why this was done but one can assume it had something to do with low viewership. Now, low viewership in itself is not a bad thing, especially for late night or daytime. The problem is the cost associated with the programming. The channel could easily put old reruns and bundle ads for those shows with bigger shows yet still make a profit. However, both Trending SA and Larger Than Life is locally produced and puts out new episodes daily, both of which make them expensive to produce.

ANN7 to relaunch BizSense as BizPulse

ANN7 (DStv 405) today announced that its soon to be a year old business show, BizSense, will be relaunched as BizPulse.

Along with the rebrand comes the announcement of the appointment of a new anchor of the business-centric news bulletin, Clive Ramathibela-Smith. He takes over from ANN7 Prime anchor, Sindy Mabe, who has been anchoring the bulletin since Stevie B left the channel earlier this year.

Clive is a seasoned market and investment analyst who combines his peculiar financial knowledge to bridge the gap of business in a democratic South Africa. At 31, Clive brings a youthful twist to the traditionally old and grey business scene. With his signature greeting halaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaala, he is likely to introduce an emphatic, precise and inspiring perspective to business coverage.

From what I have seen, Clive is similar to Richard Quest: well informed but entertaining as well. He is not entirely new to ANN7 either. He has been calling in to BizSense to give a daily market wrap.


ANN7 Editor in Chief, Moegsien Williams commented: “BizPulse is a practical and Informative show that redefines the business world. I am excited about the show and we intend to add context, perspective, and personality to our business coverage that will help our viewers tremendously”.



BizPulse airs on ANN7 Mondays to Fridays at 8pm.