eNCA looking outside of organisation for Andrew Barnes' replacement

The unexpected departure of Andrew Barnes from eNCA has left a void at the channel's Cape Town bureau, particularly at the channel's only news bulletin broadcast from Cape Town, News Day (By the way, this is the only bulletin on any 24 hour news channel in the country anchored from outside of Johannesburg).

It now seems that the channel doesn't think that anyone in the organisation is capable of filling Barnes' shoes, and has issued the below vacancy (which is posted here, courtesy of TVSA):
 eNCA is looking to hire a senior news anchor to present news bulletins from the channel's Cape Town office. The position is a one year contract post.

Reporting to the eNCA news editor, your dutires would include:

 - Anchoring daily news bulletins Monday - Friday,

- Field anchoring where necessary,

- Researching interviews as part of the editorial team,

- Contribute to story ideas and help with conceptualising content for the show,

- Check and rewrite links for the show where necessary,

- Arrange and set up interviews when required,

- Conduct live and pre-recorded interviews during and outside of the show,

- Voice-overs for packages when required,

 - Engage on social media, to promote the brand and the programme.

Requirements

- At least 10 years’ experience in journalism, with at least five of those years anchoring on TV,

 - Journalism qualification,

- Good general knowledge, thorough understanding of South African politics,

- A team player and an ability to work with others,

- Work to strict deadlines and display initiative,

- Willingness to work flexible hours - shifts, weekends and longer hours if necessary.

If you have these criteria and qualifications, you can send your Application form and a detailed CV to jobs@enca.com

Only shortlisted applicants who meet the criteria will be contacted. If you haven't received a response within 14 days after the closing of the advert, you will know that your application hasn't been successful.

Closing date: Monday, 2 May 2016.

Very few people in the country actually meet the above requirements, so I will be interesting to see who they get. Of the people that meet this requirement, how many are actually willing to move to Cape Town?

The obvious and major requirement not listed above is that the anchor has to be male. All of eNCA's flagship programming is dual anchored by a male-female pairing and the current anchor of News Day, Michelle Craig, is female.

RATINGS: Free to Air Highlights from March

Below are the news  and actuality programming highlights from the free to air channels (and a few from more popular DStv channels):
etv

• Benefiting from its lead in of the popular WWE Raw, eNews Direct Headlines on Sunday evenings continue to average over 2 million viewers in its two minute slot at 6pm. This on the heels of the channel's desire to move the under performing weekday edition out of prime time.
• In what was a very strong month for the independent broadcaster, no other news or actuality show made the channel's top 20 programming for the month.

MNet

• Carte Blanche continues to be the channel's strongest regularly schedule program, with its nearly 218 000 viewers beating out The Voice South Africa for the channel's top spot.

SABC1

• Both the Xhosa and Zulu news bulletins continue to do exceptionally well for the channel, averaging over 4 million viewers each. To put that into perspective, the only tv shows on free to air television other than on SABC1 that are beating these news bulletins are Muvhango (SABC2) and Scandal (etv).

SABC2

• Consumer rights show, Speak Out, was the number one actuality show on SABC 2, averaging over 2.7 million viewers for the month.
• The daily Afrikaans news bulletin averaged just over 1.6 million viewers.
• Ayanda-Allie Paine's Visionaries Lounge, which got off to a slow start, now averages over 1.5 million viewers.
• Daily live youth show, Hectic Nine-9, the most watched youth show in the country, averaged 1.37 million viewers for the month.
• The recently moved Sesotho and Setswana and Sepedi news bulletin now averages 1.3 million viewers in the historically weak 6pm slot on SABC2,

SABC3

• The daily English news bulletins continues to average just over 800 000 viewers.

Extra

• V Entertainment on Vuzu averaged just over 70 000 viewers for the month of March, the last month featuring Denise Zimba and Shelton Forbes before the introduction of the now negatively reviewed "#Vuzu5". It is important to remember that this vewership excludes viewers watching on the DStv Premium-only Vuzu Amp channel. 

ANN7 anchor, Lauren Jenae, jumps to... Rhythm City

When a television broadcast journalist decides to call it quits, they usually end up going to print media, radio or even academia. For ANN7 anchor, Lauren Jenae, the jump will be to a soap star, eTV's Rhythm City to be exact.

Jenae, who has anchored various odd shifts on ANN7 like weekends and fill in work, has always had acting at heart. Last year, she took off from her anchoring duties at the news channel to be a contestant on BET Africa's Top Actor SA.

Though news anchoring was not her preferred line of work, she was really not too bad as anchor, being able to hold it down be it  by simply reading the teleprompter or doing big interviews, most recently holding the controversial Pastor Mboro to task.

Rhythm City airs weekdays on eTV at 7pm.

 [Personally I thought she would deservedly have had a larger role on ANN7 in future]

etv wants to move news out of prime time: Was that the plan all along?

By now you have probably heard about etv applying to the broadcast regulator for permission to move its daily evening news bulletin out of the highly lucrative and competitive prime time slot. You have heard their reasons: It doesn't make money (or it is losing them money), it is an outdated model and they could be airing highly profitable programming in that slot. But was moving news out of prime time their plan all along?

First of all, let's make one thing clear: They are not cancelling the news bulletin, they just want to move it out of prime time, which is currently defined in South Africa as being 6pm-10pm (which is relatively long by international standards).

The whole rebranding exercise eNews Prime Time underwent to become eNews Direct now seems to make sense in a whole new way since news about the channel's ambitions became public. There is absolutely nothing 'Direct' about eNews Direct and it wanting to bring up to the minute news to South Africans. By the time the bulletin airs, the markets are closed, press conferences are already done, sporting events only take place later in the evening, the only thing trending on social media in reall time is V Entertainment, parliament is usually out of session, and so are major court cases that might warrant air time. So there really are no up to the minute updates to provide in a 'direct' way.

It seems more likely that the reason the name was changed was so that it could drop the 'Prime Time' part, so that a few months later when the program is epected to move again, viewers are already familiar with an 'eNews Direct' brand, and not a 'eNews Prime Time' brand even though it is not in prime time.

Another suspicious activity is that when eNews Direct launched in January this year, Duduzile Ramela oddly gave up her 4pm-6pm Afternoon News slot on eNCA to anchor the bulletin, even though she has previously been able to manage anchoring both slots before (4pm-6pm on eNCA, 6:30pm on etv). If etv wants to move the prime time bulletin, its most likely slot would clash with that 4pm-6pm block, probably at 5:30pm.

A similar argument can be made for Gareth Edwards who now hosts a social media segment on eNews Direct, which airs at the same time as News Night on eNCA, a bulletin he traditionally anchored on Fridays.

When tv channels launch new concept programming, like swapping eNews Prime Time for eNews Direct, they usually allow quite a few months for the new show to catch on before deciding whether it is a success or failure. The fact that the channel is saying that the bulletin is losing them money without giving it much chance to gel with audiences makes it seem as if eNews Direct was destined to fail.

President Zuma addresses the nation to apologise

Last night, s Friday night, President Zuma decided he wanted to address the nation on the Constitutional Court ruling that was announced this past week.

Many thought he would be announcing something larger than that (to be exact, his resignation), which caused the major broadcasters to scramble to provide adequate coverage for his potentially blockbuster address.

etv felt the need to push the channel's entire prime time schedule back by at least 30 minutes in order to cover the address, which means they really thought something major was going to happen as their two biggest tv shows (Rhythm City and Scandal) were pushed aside for the president. Interestingly, the channel decided to simulcast eNCA's coverage of the address instead of just extending Duduzile Ramela's eNews Direct bulletin, which was on air until 7pm and was created with the intention of covering major events as they happen.

The SABC kept disruptions on their free to air channels to a minimum. SABC3's schedule went on uninterrupted whilst the ongoing Afrikaans and Zulu news bulletins were going to cover the event during their standard 7pm broadcasts, which were extended to 7:32pm to cover the entire event.
History was also made as this was now the first major event covered by the SABC to not be anchored in the English language on the broadcaster's free to air platform. The only program on the SABC's schedule that was affected by the address was Noot vir Noot on SABC 2 which was completely preempted to broadcast the ANC's press conference.

Peter Ndoro and Vabakshnee Chetty anchored coverage on the SABC News Channel.

ANN7 seemed to have sent their staff home early, or given them the day off and the unexpected address really once again showed the channel's lack of talent. The recently appointed ANN7 Prime anchor, Sindy Mabe, was not in studio today which meant some inexperienced anchor had to do the job of covering a presidential address, which is not easy to do considering the amount of ad libbing required (and teleprompter reading, apparently). The channel's panel experts were not in studio, with analysis being provided purely by phone. In other words, ANN7 would do quite well as a radio station. They had the excellent Assignments Editor, Cecilia Russel, as the first analyst, followed by editor in chief, Moegsien Williams. They also had a political expert, all three by phone. Add to this the fact that the coverage was done from the couch. A presidential address, covered from the couch.

eNCA once again went all out with providing coverage of the address. They had Karyn Maughn, Xoli Mngambi, Angelo Fick and Justice Malala all in studio providing analysis. Later in the evening when Gwede Mantashe addressed the media, he was actually looking for Mngambi as he said Mngambi had camped out at the ANC's offices the prior evening believing the address would be held then.
Following Zuma's address, eNCA interviewed main opposition leader, Mmusi Maimane, by telephone to get his reaction to the president's remarks.

Andrew Barnes resigns from eNCA

eNCA this past week announced that senior anchor Andrew Barnes has resigned from the organisation.

This brings to the end an over 15 year journey with eNews for Barnes, where he spent most of the time anchoring News Day.

"After 23 years in broadcasting, I leave South Africa with my partner to start a new life in my favourite corner of the world, south-east Asia.  I'll be putting the years of experience I've gained in training and development to launch my own business in Cambodia.  While Brandon and I shall miss this country, we're excited that the time has come to spread our wings."

Andrew Barnes has anchored eNews' News Day since its inception when it was a thirty minute news bulletin at 1pm on etv, which replaced etv's prior 1pm news bulletin, a thirty minute international news roundup from Reuters (Remember those days?).

In 2008 Barnes'  News Day was expanded to three hours with the launch of the then eNews Channel and was paired up with Robyn Smith (three hours is a long time to be anchoring the news none stop), who ended her tenure at the group this past Monday.

Over the years (well at least since 2008), Andrew has had various co-anchors join him at News Day once Robyn Smith left that position. They were Sherezade Safla, Bhavna Singh and currently, Michelle Craig. Craig will continue to anchor the bulletin solo for the foreseeable future until a permanent co-anchor is announced, which will not be soon considering Cathy Mohlahlana has been waiting quite long already for a co-anchor to join her for Mid Morning News.

Barnes has had the opportunity to report from around the world during his time at eNews/eNCA, including reporting from Washington, D.C. for the historic 2008 election there and the royal wedding in London, among others.