Saturday 20 May 2017

eNCA shakes up actuality programming

BackChat
eNCA has over the past few days announced new additions to the channel's already strong lineup of actuality programming.


BackChatis the channel's new show geared towards the country's youth encouraging them to challenge everything.

The weekly show is anchored by Busisiwe Gumede and Sia Leita.

BackChat premieres this Thursday evening at 9:30pm.

Unfortunately, the show is not live, and next Thursday's episode was already recorded the Friday before. A six day lag is massive in aever-changingng world and for a show that incorporates social media aspects.

The second new addition to the lineup is PolitiBureau, for which the channel did send out a detailed press release, found below:

"

Seasoned and senior political reporters, Thulasizwe Simelane and Xoli Mngambi bring their extensive field reporting experience to The PolitBureau studio.

The PolitBureau, hosted by Thulasizwe Simelane and Xoli Mngambi, makes its debut on eNCA this Sunday, 21 May at 10:30am. The show promises to go beyond the spin, analyse the policy, and reveal what’s really at stake in the battles between personalities and ideologies in South Africa’s political space.

eNCA Channel News Director Mapi Mhlangu says eNCA is dedicating its top talent to helping viewers navigate the choppy political waters of 2017. “Simelane and Mngambi have a record of asking the tough questions on issues that matter, of people who do not necessarily want to answer. They will now use this experience to examine South African politics on a weekly basis; what was said, who said it, what it means and sometimes what was not said, and why," she says.

Thulasizwe Simelane has more than 15 years’ experience in the media space and a regular stand-in anchor on the channel. “As a South African journalist, I feel privileged to live in a country where the media can still help citizens interpret the extraordinary political events of our time”, says Simelane. “In writing a history of our present, things look both strange and familiar. My experience as a journalist on the rest of the continent allows me to see South Africa at 23 in a special light. How do we learn from what has gone before, from our neighbours near and far, and avoid making the mistakes in Africa’s post-independence political history.”

Xoli Mngambi, who joined the station in 2008, has proven that he is ready to tackle a bigger anchoring role and the station sees his step up to The PolitBureau as a natural progression for the talented broadcaster. “I’ve been talking to politicians and ordinary people since the road to Polokwane. A decade later I am struck by the echoes, but I am also intrigued by how much has been forgotten and how much people have erased, willingly or unwittingly. To live through these events and be given the privilege to help tell these ordinary and extraordinary stories of our times on a platform like eNCA: I am honoured." says Mngambi.

Regular contributors to the show will include our team of top reporters; Karyn Maughan, Lester Kiewit, Nickolaus Bauer and Annika Larsen. The station has also secured the services of analysts, who will further enrich the show’s political offering.

The PolitBureau will premier this Sunday, 21 May, at 10:30am with a repeat at 7:30pm.

"


To make way for PolitiBureau, Maggs on Media vacates its long-held 10:30am slot for 11:30am, still on Sundays.

Tuesday 16 May 2017

eNCA announes new News Night anchors, tweaks schedule

New News Night anchors, Cathy Mohlahlana and Vuyo Mvoko
eNCA yesterday announced that Cathy Mohlahlana and Vuyo Mvoko will take over anchoring duties on News Night.

The two have been screen testing together since April during Cathy's long running midmorning slot.

On the opportunity, Mvoko said, "Cathy and I hope to rise to the challenge of telling the story as it unfolds."

Both have been tweeting and replying to congratulations messages from colleagues and the public since the announcement was made. It is perhaps their social media presence that will be their greatest asset going in to prime time. Both are perceived highly favourably online, with Cathy having over 45 thousand followers and Vuyo with 47 thousand followers on Twitter.

Mvoko is a former contributing editor at SABC News and actually hosted a prime time news show at the start of 2016. This show was pulled from the air after Mvoko did an entire show centered on the State of Capture report. He left the SABC not too long after as part of the #SABC8 and started freelancing with eNCA earlier this year.

Cathy is a long time eNCA reporter and anchor, occupying the midmorning slot since 2014. During the election that year, Cathy was one of the channel's main reporters from the IEC's elections result centre. The midmorning slot has been where most news breaks in South Africa and Cathy has anchored coverage solo during many major breaking news stories including the Oscar Pistorius trial, protests, and of course, as is now the norm, countless press conferences.

Overall, this is the perfect choice by the channel with both being highly regarded by the public, highly competent at anchoring and coming across with a wonderful screen presence.

Other changes to the channel include longrunning News Night anchor, Jeremy Maggs moving to News Day (1pm, eNCA) solo, with the current news Day team, Shahan Ramkissoon and Michelle Craig moving to Cathy's old 9am to 1pm slot.

Everything else remains unchanged.

RATINGS: Free to air highlights from April 2017

Below are the free to air news highlights for April. Just a reminder that at the start of the month, SABC2 and SABC3 both shifted news programming around as part of a schedule retweak.
  • Xhosa News (SABC1, 7pm): 4.615 million
  • Zulu News (SABC1, 7pm): 4.576 million
  • eNews Direct Headlines (etv, Sunday, 6pm): 2.367 million
  • Afrikaans News (SABC2, 6:30pm):1.373 million
  • Sesotho, Setswana, Sepedi News (SABC2, 8pm): 1.088 million
  • Venda, Tsonga News (SABC2, 5:30pm): 1.019 million
  • English News (SABC3, 6pm):638 978

RATINGS: 24 hour news channels for April

As seen above, here are the audience shares for the 24 hour news channels on DStv. Historically, it was eNCA's Patrick Conroy that took the brag and posted this image, but now that he doesn't manage the channel anymore, the new channel head posted the above private image for everyone to see.

As always, eNCA continues to hold above half of the market share, meaning that out of every two people watching news on DStv, one is watching eNCA. Looking at the comparison table, we can see that eNCA was actually below 50% in the preceding motnh, which is something I don't recall seeing before.

Both ANN7 and SABC News Channel are slowly building an audience as both channels are up quite a bit from a year ago.

However, we can see that though SABC News Channel and ANN7 grew, this growth has not been coming at the expense of eNCA. Instead, the international news and business news channels are suffering instead with all of them down sharply from what they were doing late last year when interest in the American election was high.

What should be most concerning is the absolutely poor performance from local business news channels. When it comes to Al Jazeera or BBC World News, they are okay with having such low viewership because their channels are available all around the world on different platforms to make up for poor performance in one location.

However, neither CNBC Africa or Business Day TV has the same cushion to protect them: DStv viewership is all they have and when no one watches them on DStv, there is no one watching them anywhere in the world.

Tuesday 2 May 2017

Ayanda-Allie Paine back at eNCA

Ayanda-Allie Paine has announced that she will be rejoining eNCA, this time as weekend breakfast anchor.

Paine. who hosted eNCA's weekday morning programme, Morning News Today, left eNCA to take up the position of newsreader at the much wider watched Morning Live (SABC2, SABC News Channel). She left that position in February 2016 for a role at Power FM (I suppose the cool radio station these days) before now announcing her return to eNCA.

This will, in fact, be eNCA's first ever weekend breakfast show as the channel just did one long unbranded rolling news bulletin on weekends with rotating anchors.

The show, which is titled 'Weekend Wake Up' will air both Saturday and Sunday mornings between 7am and 10am.

It is strange that someone as talented as Ayanda will be permanently allocated weekend hours when eNCA still has a massive void to fill during weekday prime time with both Jeremy Maggs and Iman Rappetti leaving the station. Either way, I'm personally very happy to have Ayanda back on screen.