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.

Michael Appel leaves ANN7 for eNCA

For the first time since its inception, a major on-air talent has left ANN7 for another tv broadcaster, with Michael Appel leaving the organisation for eNCA.

Michael has been with ANN7 since inception and has really been one of the channel's cornerstones, playing a pivotal role in covering some of the major news stories over these last three years, including rolling coverage of the Oscar Pistorius trial. Coverage of that trial led to Appel being featured quite prominently in the highly buzzed about documentary based on the trial by the UK's ITV.


Michael has really been one of the on air reporters that have grown with their time at ANN7. Prior to being part of the channel, he worked at the channel's sister newspaper, The New Age.

Michael's loss will be a huge blow to ANN7. He, along with Keldon Ongmu have been the channel's two most reliable reporters and were the only constant at the channel given all the changes that they experience.

He now joins eNCA, who slowly seems to be hiring quite a few established journalists these days to reinforce an already strong lineup.

ANN7 starts live streaming channel on Youtube

ANN7 has started livestreaming the channel's 24/7 feed as seen on DStv on Youtube.

It becomes the first general news channel in the country to do so, but both business news channels (CNBC Africa and Business Day TV) have been doing so for a while already. In addition, SABC News Channel livestreams certain programmes on youtube but not the entire channel.

The livestream can be found at the 'ANN7 TV' account. I am told that the channel will be using this Youtube account temporarily whilst it sorts out issues with their main Youtube account.

The channel continues to livestream from their website as well, but the media player used there is less efficient than Youtube and has compatibility issues with certain mobile devices.

Viewership on the livestream tends to peak during the work day (when everyone uses their workplace's wifi, I see you) and declines at night hen everyone is home and has access to their DStv decoders.

RATINGS: September free to air highlights

Below are the news and actuality programming highlights for free to air broadcasts for September:

• The Xhosa news bulletin on SABC1 once again led the pack, peaking at 4.28 million viewers, with the Zulu News bulletin at 4.17 million viewers.
• The most watched news bulletin on SABC2, pulling slightly more than 1.4 million viewers. No other news bulletin on the channel made the channel's top 20 list.
• SABC3's most watched bulletin, the SABC's main English one, pulled just under 667 000 viewers.
• [In the official records on the Broadcast Research Council, an episode of Rythm City is incorrectly labelled as eNews Direct.]
• The two minute weekend editions of eNews Direct continues to benefit from its strong WWE lead in, peaking at an impressive 3.28 million viewers.

• SABC2's actuality programming continues its strong form with Speak Out peaking at 2.5 million viewers, When Duty Calls pulling 1.3 million viewers and Ngula Yavutivi with 1.3 million viewers. 

Hard Copy back after ten years

The only South African drama series that goes behind the scenes of a newspaper's newsroom, Hardcopy, returned to the air this past week after a break of ten years off the air, probably the biggest such return in South Africa ever.

The only original cast member to return to the show is Jody Abrahams, whose character (Benny Jacobs) has now been promoted to editor of the fictional newspaper, The Bulletin.

Over its first three seasons, which aired from 2005-2006 (before being reran countless times by the channel) covered things like editorial independence and the shift of newspapers from a hard news format to a more trashy and sensational tabloid format, and now back again.

This season, topics range from a newspaper editor burying a story which involves a relative to the battle between digital and traditional media, among other issues it will tackle from the world of journalism.

The co-creator of the show, Anton Harber, is now editor-in-chief at eNCA.

Hard Copy airs Mondays at 9pm on SABC3.