ANN7 launches Consumer Guard

ANN7 (DStv 405) has announced another new show in the channel's current expansion of current affairs programming, Consumer Guard.

The show will focus on consumer rights and issues relating to that, highlighting consumer rip-offs, market collusion, and price fixing. It aims to inform, educate and give guidance as to what consumers can do to extend the value of their rand.

The weekly show will expose businesses that are colluding within the various industries, making it difficult for consumers to afford basic necessities.

Former Generations actor, Palesa Madisakwane‏ (who has had a rather odd week on social media) will host. She has been anchoring on ANN7 for a few months already.

ANN7 News Editor, Abhinav Sahay says: “On the first episode, the show tackles the issue of cellphone companies and their services. It aims to answer the question 'Are South Africans getting their money's worth when it comes to their cellphone networks?”

Consumer Guard premieres on Saturday afternoons at 2:30pm from March 25th, with repeats on Sunday afternoons at 3:30pm.

SABC3 schedule shakeup: Big news and actuality shifts and cuts

SABC3 this past week announced a new 'autumn schedule' (just anther name for a shakeup) which sees major changes for nearly all the channel's news and actuality programmes. here are the highlights:


The Prime Time News bulletin moves half an hour earlier
The channel's main English news bulletin, Prime Time News with Francis Herd and Peter Ndoro, moves thirty minutes earlier to 6pm. This now moves it out of direct competition with the only other prime-time English news bulletin, etv's eNews Direct.

Though this might disturb the gradual build in audience the bulletin has seen, it is not necessarily bad, in fact its good programming from the SABC: From 5:30pm daily, the SABC will now have at least one news bulletin available on its free to air broadcasts (and takes the English and Afrikaans bulletins out of direct competition with each other) at any given time until 7:30pm. That's two hours of nonstop free to air primetime news cascaded across their three free to air news channels.

One thing we don't know from this change is how it will affect the business news bulletin that currently airs in its slot on SABC News Channel. SABC3's bulletin is just a simulcast of SABC News Channel, which currently airs a business-centric bulletin at 6pm. Whether that simply shifts later or gets canceled all together is not yet known.

This is also not the first shift for the bulletin that used to air at 8pm way back in the day. After an extended period at 7pm, the bulletin was shifted to 6pm as it could no longer compete directly with what at the time was a very highly rated news bulletin on etv (those ratings have absolutely plummeted since being shifted to 6:30pm). The bulletin was then extended for an hour to 7pm, before losing its first 30 minutes again, resulting in it airing in its current 6:30pm slot.

Expresso loses half an hour
 SABC3's breakfast show, Expresso (which just last weekend won Best Variety Show at the SAFTA's), will be losing 30 minutes of air to return back to being a two and a half hour show. However, the half hour being cut is the 6am half hour (to make way for a kiddies block) and not the recently added 8:30am half hour.

This means that Expresso, which once was the first breakfast show on air daily back when it started, going live at 5:30am, will now be the last breakfast show on any South African channel to go on air in the morning. Though that may be considered a negative for a news-centric show, Expresso is not that, they are a laid back chat show and cutting their least profitable half hour is not a bad thing.

Deutsche Welle is back
After silently replacing the German news service's broadcast on SABC2 with SABC News, DW, which is an international news service based in Germany, is back on the air on the SABC, now airing between 11:30pm and 2am daily.

Though it is not bad to have a massive two and a half hours  of fresh news content every evening in a time when the channel is used to airing reruns, airing DW isin contravention of whatever policy the SABC has that allowed it to cancel The Big Debate, which has subsequently moved to etv: That of the SABC not airing news content that it does not have editorial control over.

SABC News reruns
After DW goes off the air, overnights continue with SABC News content. It is uncertain what will happen to the SABC News' overnight feed on SABC2 as it makes no sense for  both channels to be airing the same thing at the same time for over three hours.

Afternoon Express and Real Talk with Anele swap slots
Afternoon Express now gets a slot in the actual afternoon and not the early evening at 4pm while Real Talk with Anele, which does generate a massive amount of social media buzz, now gets the lucrative 5pm slot where it can be sampled by an even larger potential audience.

Trending SA moves earlier, loses Fridays, loses reruns
The channel's relatively late night show, Trending SA, moves half hour earlier to 9:30pm, a timeslot when more people are actually still watching tv, meaning it no longer goes off air at 11pm.
In addition, it loses its Friday night slot, a night when most tv shows have lower viewership in any case.
The show also now completely vacates the 12pm slot, where it has been airing as a rerun since being moved from airing original episodes then. In its place are other reruns and... Hollywood News (why not).

Current Affairs
Special Assignment now moves to Monday's at 9pm, where it can compete with eNCA's Justice Factor for social media buzz (let's be honest, social media buzz, which does not generate cash, is a major factor considered now when scheduling is compiled).
Interface gets canceled completely in favour of celebrity stuff.

Finally, Funatix, the tween day time show that airs when children arein school, is now completely cancelled.

The rest of the channel's changes is just a shuffling of daytime reruns.

2017 SAFTAs: ZANews wins big... again

The 2017 edition of the SAFTAs took place this past week and, as we are all now used to, SA's only satirical news programme, ZANews Puppet Nation, won big once again.

The categories the show won are:

Best TV Comedy

Best Achievement in Directing - Comedy (Alex Fynn & Johannes Theodorus Vermaak )

Best Achievement in Post Production Sound Design - TV Comedy (Neil Benjamin)

Best Achievement in Art/Production Design - TV Comedy (Catherine Anne Jacot-Guillarmod, Racine Tanya Williams & Simone Rossouw)

With the show consistently receiving recognition for its work, it is surprising that it has not yet jumped to a television channel with a much bigger reach or another channel has not at least attempted to steal them away from StarSat. Also, consider the fact that they produce their show for a DStv audience and not a StarSat audience: They frequently make fun of news programming that is available exclusively on DStv. For example, one of their puppet co-hosts is Justice Malala. He is a personality seen only on eNCA which is available only on DStv so one can't expect the StarSat audience to connect with this character they don't really see too often. 

Yes, they do upload their episodes in their entirety for free on Youtube, but very few people find these episodes as very few know they exist in the first place. 

Other SAFTA highlights include:

 Nobody's Died Laughing winning best documentary film,
ZANews' sister show, Point of Order winning best game show,
SABC3's breakfast show, Expresso winning Best Variety Show, 

50/50 winning Best Magazine Show, 

Special Assignment's 'Spieners' episode beating out two Carte Blanche episodes for Best Current Affairs Actuality Programme

Nzinga Qunta joins SABC News Channel

Former ANN7 Prime anchor, Nzinga Qunta is back on our screens in a regular role, now anchoring the SABC News Channel's Midday Report and, by consequence (due to simulcasting), SABC3's News at 1.


She has been in the role since the middle of February but I have only recently been able to confirm the move is not a temporary arrangement.

Since leaving ANN7 back in June 2015, Qunta has become a mother and planned to be a stay at home mom, but as she tweeted today, the news bug bit and she could not resist a return to screens (@NzingaQ: I was but I missed news and life changes 😬).

Nzinga brings SABC News an asset very few other on-air personalities on any news channel have: the ability to organically connect with younger people on social media and cleverly try to convert these tweets to viewers. She engages with her over 26 000 Twitter followers as if she is just another one of them and not some news person just delivering the same news in the same way just on another platform.

Though the 1pm hour is business centric, having such a strong social media user anchoring during the afternoon is an added benefit during hours when the things trending online usually is a direct result of live broadcasts happening during these hours (Parliamentary sessions, press conferences, court proceedings, etc).

Qunta is also a former Channel O presenter, presenting the channel's then flagship show, O-boma from 2007 to 2009 (Remember that show? It feels like a real lifetime ago).  She holds a BA degree from Wits in English Literature and Law.

Both Iman Rappetti and Jeremy Maggs leaving News Night

eNCA has unexpectedly announced that both news anchors of News Night, Senior Anchors Jeremy Maggs and Iman Rappetti, will be leaving the channel's prime time news bulletin, News Night.


The reason for both anchors leaving is that neither wants to work at night anymore. Though prime time is where any journalist wants to be considering its much larger audience, the veteran anchors are no longer willing to work their long days: both are presenters on PowerFM in the morning, then anchors at night.

Rather poetically (or coincidentally), burnout due to working radio and tv is the exact same reason why News Night's first female anchor, Redi Thlabi (then Redi Direko), left the job as well.

In recent months the two have been increasingly taking off days as well. This reached a stage where neither anchors on a Friday night and during the rest of the week it is mostly only one of them on duty.

Maggs leaves the slot after nearly nine years there, while Rappetti leaves after five. The five years that the duo have been together precedes the existence of the country's other two news channels, SABC News Channel and ANN7 and have been the constant in eNCA's lineup tweaks over the past few years, including a name change.

“It has been a heady, tough, rewarding, crazy ride,” says Iman.

“Both Jeremy and Iman have been key to the success of eNCA,” says Channel News Director Mapi Mhlangu. “We thank them for their loyalty, hard work and brilliance in bringing powerful news stories to our screens. This is a big change for the channel and our viewers, but also an opportunity to showcase talent in our newsroom and beyond.”

No word yet on who will replace the duo, but eNCA's bench of good enough anchors is not that deep so if anchors in other slots get the promotion, the channel will still have to look outside the group for new anchors in those slots. (Personally, my bets are on Joanne Joseph and Gareth Edwards, as that reduces disruption on the rest of the schedule and doesn't pull any of the quality reporters  from the field, but let's see).

Their final evening on News Night is expected in May, closer to the channel's birthday.

Supersport Blitz to broadcasst in HD

It was announced at the MultiChoice upfronts today that Supersport Blitz, South Africa's only 24/7 sports news channel, will start broadcasting in the high definition format soon.


Thee channel now joins seven other of Supersport's countless channels in broadcasting in High Definition. the switchover will happen later this month.

In addition, on the SuperSport front at least, the broadcaster noted that they will be launching a 24/7 eSports channel that will eventually broadcast domestic eSports tournaments as well, like the big ones held at the rAge expo. eSports is when we watch other people play video games.

UPDATED: ANN7 relaunches Straight Talk (Again)

ANN7 has announced that they will once again be relaunching their long form interview and analysis programme, Straight Talk.

The programme was initially started in 2015 as a replacement for Political Edge, which was a similarly formatted show anchored by Hajra Omarjee. In 2015, Straight Talk was anchored by editor in chief, Moegsien Williams and in 2016 it was anchored by Chelsea Lotz (who has since moved on to become ANN7's Cape Town based reporter).

This year, the show will be anchored by Sifiso Mahlangu, who is the channel's political analyst and also writes for their sister newspaper, The New Age. He holds qualifications in Psychology, Communication, and Political Science.  (He is quite spicy on Twitter too)

Through his  brand of humor and personality, Mahlangu seeks answers to tough question and pulls no punches in getting to the truth and providing a local narrative to South African current affairs and news-makers.

ANN7 News Editor, Abhinav Sahay says: "We are excited about the  revamped Straight Talk show; everyone has a question and Straight Talk will provide the answers.”

Straight Talk launches on ANN7 on Sunday 12 March and airs weekly in the 7pm slot, with repeats :Monday mornings at 7:30am.

Abigail Visagie finishes short in E! Presenter Search

ANN7 anchor, Abigail Visagie, finished in second place in the inaugural E! Presenter Search South Africa competition.

She lost to former Mzansi Insider presenter, Katleho Sinivasan, in the finals of the six-week talent search competition (Not much of a talent 'search' actually considering everyone on the show was already 'found' and at least half famous already). the final challenge was a traditional red carpet interview setup, something Visagie has done at least twice before, and live at that, for ANN7's South African of the Year Awards.

Visagie joins ANN7 anchor, Lauren Janae (Top Actor SA), and former anchor, Mbali Nkosi (Big Brother Mzansi), in competing in other channels' talent contests, doing well, then coming up just short in the end. But if precedence is anything to go by, she will probably get good opportunities due to the positive exposure she has received.

Sinivasan won a year-long contract with E! to be its South African-based correspondent. He will also go on a trip to Hollywood to meet the E! team on that side. His first gig for the channel was today actually, representing E! (which is part of the NBC Universal group) at the Multichoice Upfronts. His first major on-air role will be to cohost E!'s red carpet coverage of the SAFTA Awards later this month with Bonang Matheba.

Picking her chin up after the defeat, Visagie was back anchoring her Express Lunch bulletin today on ANN7. But then again, is it a defeat considering ANN7 is available in more than double the homes that the E! channel is available in and has a higher viewership in South Africa?That and the fact she is on air about fifteen hours a week compared to maybe an hour a week for the E! gig, if that even.

RATINGS: 2017 State of the Nation Address

The annual State of the Nation Address was delivered by President Zuma on Thursday, 9 February.

SABC2's broadcast, which aired from 17:55 to 22:10 averaged a healthy 2.599 million viewers over the four hours and fifteen minutes. This is above what the channel would normally have averaged in that time period had they aired a traditional prime time lineup.

Though the Address was carried live on etv as well, the Address did not make the cut for that channel's top 20 programmes for the month of February.

South Africa's most watched news channel, eNCA, provided wall to wall coverage on the day. This, coupled with the fact that eNCA and 'Annika Larsen' were trending on Twitter for all the wrong reasons led to that channel pulling a massive  371 151 viewership average from 6pm to 11pm. I cannot back this up, but I do suspect this might be eNCA's highest rated block of programming in the channel's nine-year history.

The State of the Nation Address was broadcast live on SABC2, etv, eNCA, SABC News Channel, ANN7, The Parliamentary Service, CNBC Africa and Islam TV. However, viewership is not publicly available for the smaller broadcasters due to them not making the top 30 broadcasts for DStv during the month.

RATINGS: Free to air news and actuality highlights for February 2017

News bulletins:

• Xhosa News (SABC1): 4.123 million viewers
• Zulu News (SABC1): 4.061 million viewers
• Siswati/Ndebele News(SABC1): 2.459 million viewers
• eNewsDirect Headlines Sunday (etv): 2.166 million viewers
• Afrikaans News (SABC2): 1.802 million viewers
• Sesotho/Setswana/Sepedi News (SABC2): 1.311 million viewers
• English News (SABC3): 893 617 viewers

Actuality programming:

• Speak Out (SABC2): 2.586 million viewers
• No other actuality show (Special Assignment, Checkpoint, etc) made the top 20 of their respective channels.

Documentaries:

• Now or Never  (SABC1): 2.848 million viewers
• African River Goddess (SABC2): 1.265 million viewers
• The Last Lioness (SABC3): 788 111 viewers
• The Cheetah Diaries (SABC3): 726 762 viewers
• Saving Rhino (SABC3): 588 471 viewers

Stray observations:

• Thanks to Generations airing on SABC3 due to AFCON, Top Billing experienced an extreme spike in viewership due to Generations viewers staying behind, pulling nearly triple of Top Billing's usual audience (usually in the 600 000 range), with 1.6 million viewers).high-qualityquality lead ins due to SABC1's shows being broadcast on other channels led to some rather weird audience retentions. For example, by having Skeem Saam air before it, 7de Laan had a rather good month. Who woould have known those two shows could have audience overlap? 
• The Metro FM Music Awards performed well once again, attracting an average of 4.17 million viewers  over its three hour broadcast on a Saturday night.

etv this past week revealed at their upfronts that their eKasi+ (OpenviewHD 105) channel will be rebranded as eExtra.  

The new channel will focus entirely on international content, only holding reruns of etv's three soap operas as its only local content. No word yet on what will happen to the eNews Izindaba news bulletin that currently airs on the channel

This means that etv's venture to continuously grow their investment in local content is inexplicably over. The reason I describe this change of direction as inexplicable is because the large amount of local content was doing so well in the ratings and continuously generated positive buzz for the channel.

Also, by producing a large amount of local content themselves, they could rerun these shows nonstop on their second tier channels, without having to now pay the license fees for rights of foreign shows they can now only air in limited windows.

The reason for them canceling the local talk shows was acceptable though: the celebrity guests would appear on all talk shows saying the same thing so producing talk shows were no longer producing compelling tv.

The scaling back of local dramas in favour of three-year-old American shows was never explained.

etv does not seem to realise times have changed. People without access to pay tv will now easily pirate foreign content they want to watch rather than wait three years for etv to air a show well after its international (and social media) buzz has died.

When eKasi+ launched, etv were, admittedly, producing local shows for that channel at a loss: They were expensive to produce with a very small audience due to the then small footprint of OpenviewHD. Since then, the satellite platform has grown greatly, meaning producing local shows exclusively for eKasi+ would now have been profitable due to improved economies of scale.

The eExtra channel will however more closely omplement the etv schedule. For example, when etv airs programming targeting a female audience, eExtra will air content targeting males, like the literally ten year old series, Burn Notice.

eKasi+ terminates on March 31st with eExtra going live the next day.
(details courtesy of tvsa)

ANALYSIS: M-Net shuffles series channels... AGAIN

M-Net today announced it is once again 'streamlining' its content offering. I will provide analysis on this (and before that, a summary of the changes) but first a look at how things are now.


Currently
M-Net runs six series channels currently:
First run (targeting premium subscribers)

• M-Net: The long-running main channel showing general mainstream series, mainly from US broadcast networks (free to air). Also airs limited original domestic programming targeting mainly English-speaking white viewers.
• M-Net Edge: The channel showing more serious and darker shows, mainly from US cable networks (pay tv).
• Vuzu Amp: A mixture of the two but with content targeting more young adults and those part of urban culture. Also features limited original domestic programming targeting mainly a younger black audience.

Second run (Targeting Compact/Extra subscribers)

• M-Net City: A crime-centric channel with content being funneled from mainly from M-Net Edge, but a few shows from M-Net as well.
• Vuzu: A youth-centric series channel funneling feature content from Vuzu Amp and comedic content from M-Net. 

Third run (Targeting Family subscribers)

• M-Net Family: Essentially an everything else channel- It airs talk shows that do not air on other channels, it shows second run content from the first run channels that do not fit on M-Net City or Vuzu (eg Masterchef) and it airs third run content from M-Net City and Vuzu that M-Net still has rights to.

Changes

• M-Net Edge is shutting down completely. (Apparently) All of its content is being shifted to M-Net to once again turn that channel into a super channel basically, with new content being seen on M-Net from 6pm to midnight every day from Monday to Saturday and on Sunday, from 3:30pm to whenever the second movie premiere ends after midnight.
• M-Net Family is shutting down completely with Vuzu being given to Family subscribers to make up for the loss
• [Oh, and the movie channel, M-Net Showcase, is shutting down too]

Analysis

The thing is, no matter how hard M-Net tries to spin this about giving subscribers value, they need to come to a point where they can be open and say that this is a cost-cutting measure. That's it. No value is getting created at all.

Real value

No real value is being created for subscribers. In fact, real value is being cut from subscribers (I use the term 'real value' to describe the cash value M-Net spends on purchasing content). Here's why: Currently M-Net Edge airs new programming from 7pm to 10pm daily. When the new format takes effect, M-Net Edge's content will only air from 9:30pm to midnight on the redeveloped M-Net, a loss of thirty minutes of new content a day, everyday totaling 2.5 hours in the week and a few more hours on weekends when the channel also aired new content.

In addition, the content that aired before 7pm and after 10pm were mainly older 'library content,' which though may have been old, still cost M-net money to air, money they no longer going to need to spend, even though the channel would not call this cost cutting. 

With M-Net Family now eliminated, M-Net now no longer needs to pay license fees to air content in the third window anymore, providing them with more cost cutting opportunities. 

Perceived value

I use this term to refer to the value existing/created in the viewer's head. Firstly the loss of three channels is already considered a loss of value for subscribers, even though the losses will mainly be repeats and reruns. A mere reduction in the number of channels, no matter what channel it was, feels like a loss to someone who will still be paying the same subscription fee.

However, though subscribers complain about repeats, to many, repeats are a convenience. After all, not everyone has a PVR and even those that do might not have the opportunity to record everything they would like to. Try to imagine how someone without a PVR even keeps up with all the nonstop new content for the entire day. Instead of watching sport or going out on a Saturday evening, as most people do, these viewers would now be forced to stay home merely to watch a show they watch now that it airs new episodes on this inconvenient day.

Or consider the inconvenience when the show you have been watching at 7:30pm on M-Net Edge now airs at 10pm on M-Net, forcing you to make changes to your lifestyle if you still want to keep up with the show (This is a real example).

Having so many shows on one channel also leads to viewers overlooking a lot of shows they might have found on an easier schedule. Not finding shows as frequently as they would have reduces their perceived value of what they are paying for. 

Channel drift

"Channel drift or network decay is the gradual shift of a television network away from its original programming, to either target a newer and more profitable audience, or to broaden their viewership by including less niche programming" -Wikipedia

When Vuzu started as a single channel, it aimed to be a youth-centric premium channel with a lot of live and taped domestic original series. Then Mzansi Magic started and M-Net shifted its focus of domestic original series to that channel and Vuzu became a youth-centric premium channel. Then Vuzu Amp started and Vuzu became a youth-centric channel.

Now M-Net Family ends and Vuzu becomes a channel. Shows like The Doctors and Masterchef airs only on M-Net Family in the second window and with Vuzu picking up M-Net Family's load, these shows would have to move to Vuzu. Now imagine the voice of Vuzu, Siabonga Ngwekazi, having to narrate promos for these shows now that they on Vuzu, which in turn now loses any identity it has. 

Impatience? 

What makes M-Net fundamentally different from a tv channel like etv? While etv's life depends on its viewership to bring in ad revenue, M-Net simply needs to keep DStv subscribers paying their subscription (not necessarily watching). So while etv has to constantly adapt or die in order to generate ad revenue, M-Net has the luxury of being able to allow something to grow with time. 

However, M-Net just doesn't seem to be able to keep their hands off their channels. Here's some fundamental channel changes M-Net has made this side of 2010 alone:

• January 2010: 'Refocus' M-Net 101 as the place to be for premium entertainment. This includes yanking shows from M-Net Series like American Idol to bolster its schedule, leaving people on smaller bouquets like Compact without first run shows they have always had access to. This reinvestment in the channel also sees an expanded local content slate including two Carte Blanche spin-offs on the channel. 

• circa 2011: M-Net removes most local content from M-Net 101, keeping only The Wild (soap), Idols and Carte Blanche. English local content will be focussed on Mzansi Magic only.

• July 2013: Split the M-Net Series channel into three series channels: Showcase for premium series, Reality for second run series, Zone for reruns. Remember those few shows Compact subscribers had yanked away? Well, now an entire channel's worth of programming was taken away from them, being given the second rate Zone in return. Also, a lot of first run reality series on Vuzu was taken away to fill the Reality channel.

• October 2014: Realising that they launched tv channels with absolutely no identities, M-Net Showcase and Reality are pulled from the air. Viewers that were invested in shows on those channels were forced to watch seasons end with up to four hour long episodes stuffed down their throats on a single evening so that the channels could close (This is repeating itself now in 2017). In their place, M-Net launched two channels that are actually well branded: M-Net Edge and Vuzu Amp. Residual programming (like talk shows) is shifted to the tv channel, Magicworld. 

• April 2015: M-Net Series Zone is replaced with M-Net City, though content remains largely the same initially (M-Net City goes through countless changes before settling on its current format).

• July 2015: M-Net Family replaces Magicworld, keeping the talk shows and telenovelas, but now becomes M-Net's first third window channel. 

• 2016: M-Net starts to reintroduce local programming to M-Net 101 after discontinuing local programming on the channel, previously only keeping legacy series, Idols and Carte Blanche. 

• April 2017: Like in January 2010, M-Net now plans to refocus on M-Net 101, ending M-Net Edge and M-Net Family. Viewers of certain shows will now once again be forced to watch up to a brutal four hours worth of episodes at a time in order to complete their series. 

As seen here, M-Net never sticks with a programming strategy long enough to see it succeed but restructures in what now seems an annual practice that they blame on channels underperforming. How can a channel perform well if it does not even get enough time to do so? This does not even include the countless changes made to the M-Net Movies bouquet of channels that loses now yet another channel. 

All these changes come into effect April first, which coincides with the date on which the price of DStv Premium rises by R30 per month. So imagine that: Literally paying more and literally getting less.  

If you would like me to do more articles like this analysing the industry, let me know.