eNews Prime Time to be replaced by eNews Direct

From Monday, January 18th 2015, eTV's prime time news bulletin, eNews Prime Time, will be replaced by a new brand, eNews Direct.

Advertised as being just the up to the  minute headlines, nothing else, eNews Direct is the independent broadcaster's attempt to revive the ratings for their news bulletin which has lost more than half of its viewers since being moved from its longstanding 7pm position last year.

The bulletin will continue to be anchored by Duduzile Ramele with Sandile Nqose on the sports headlines.

What will change is the studio from which the news originates. It will no longer be done from eTV's studio 101 (where it shares space with the breakfast show, Sunrise),  but will move to the studio previously occupied by eNCA's African programming, Africa 360 and African Edition, which is much closer to the newsroom. The studio has received a slight facelift, again, which I personally feel makes it not just the best version of this studio I have seen, but easily one of the best in the country.

Moving to a studio closer to the newsroom also coincdes with the show's aim of taking viewers to the pulse of the story, with the anchor doing live shots from inside the actual newsroom.

This format is currently being experimented with by ANN7 with its 6pm Newsroom Live with Chante Jantjies where she goes to the journalists in the newsroom for the story. Though the format sounds good on paper, ANN7's bulletin feautures shaky camera work, poor lighting and many sound technical problems, so I will be keen to see whether this new bulletin from eNews will be different.

Monde Twala, managing director of eTV's channels said that the change is in response to changes in how news is consumed

This is the first major change in the format of the prime time news bulletin on eTV since way back in the early 2000s when the bulletin moved from Cape Town to Joburg and even experimented at being a one hour bulletin for a while.

Whether it is a success or not will depend on how viewership numbers will react to the change, which I do not think will change by much.