Earlier this month, the once youngest news anchor on all of South African television, Chante Jantjies, left ANN7 (DStv 405).
Chante, who has been with ANN7 since inception, is a former Miss Teen Universe (and Miss Teen SA) and now has her sights set on the main pageant title, Miss SA.
Whilst at ANN7, the former (but again current) beauty queen has filled various roles [and it has been an absolute pleasure to watch her grow as a news anchor/reporter]. Her first structured anchoring slot was the weekday 9am-11am slot. At the start o 2015 she was moved to weekend breakfast as to better accomodate her studies, before more recently taking up the role of the lunch time anchor. In addition, late last year she added Newsroom Live to her schedule, a news bulletin that e.tv tried to duplicate with eNews Direct.
On Express Lunch and Newsroom Live, Abigail Visagie takes over anchoring duties, which leaves Peter van Onselen as solo anchor of Vuka Africa once again. Abigail is now also the last of the anchors ANN7 hired and trained at inception that still has a weekday slot and is sill with the channel.
Christmas time is a time for family and friends but the news cycle continues, no matter how slow it goes.
On Christmas 2014, CNN (DStv 401) had a mere 10 hours of live news on their schedule. When you thought it could not go any lower, it does indeed with them only having a mere 6 hours of live content on Christmas day this year (a quarter of a day), with the rest of the time filled with magazine shows, review shows and two airings of the CNN Heores awards in its entirety [Amount of hours measured using 24 hours in the US Eastern Time zone where the channel is head quartered].
Zain Asher, who has been on air this entire week worked extra hours in addition to her own and so did business anchor, Richard Quest, who did quite a few editions of CNN Newsroom. Quest, who has been on air every Christmas for the last few years (to allow those that celebrate the day to do so and to have a nice day filled with feel feel good stories) even has a Christmas tradition of his own whereby he cracks Christmas crackers on air with the behind the scenes personalities, seen below:
On eNCA, the Christmas schedule once again started an hour later, allowing the anchors to sleep in an extra hour, this year being Gareth Edwards who got to do breakfast show duty this year. Gareth had been anchoring News Night in place for Jeremy Maggs and Iman Rappetti who deserve the award for easiest schedule in news considering Gareth fills in for both of them most Fridays and now the whole festive week. Thulasizwe Simelane stood in for Cathy Mohlahlana and Joanne Josephs from 9am onward. Florence Letoaba did News Night
ANN7 had weekend Vuka Africa anchor Liezle Wilson anchoring on Christmas and, as they did last year, broadcast a live Church sermon to commemorate the day. In prime time Chante Janjies anchored, which she really did not want to do, as she tweeted. She ended after ANN7 Prime and the channel just rebroadcast her same news bulletin for the rest of the evening.
Morning Live, which was broadcast on SABC News Channel only and not SABC 2 had some live crossings to usual newsreader Ayanda Allie Paine who was capturin the festive spirit from outside the studio whilst Vaylen Kirtley held things down in the studio. The channel, once again, had the most (live) news on Christmas.
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On Christmas Eve, both eNCA and CNNi broke with tradition and chose not to cover the Pope's Christmas Eve Mass at all, even though they had in previous years. This year, the broadcast also made the jump from SABC3 to SABC2, the public broadcaster's channel featuring the most festive content. ANN7 also broadcast a large portion of the event live, but did so using a broadband connection which obviously is not even close to being as good as a high quality satellite connection as SABC2 had.
With Nzinga Qunta out as ANN7 Prime anchor, ANN7 has taken the opportunity to shake up their anchor line up.
Sebenzile Nkambule and Candy Harris. ANN7 Prime, June 22nd 2015
Firstly, and most importantly, mid morning anchor, Sebenzile Nkambule, who joined the channel late last year from Radio 702 makes the giant leap to ANN7 Prime.
Following the success of the double anchor format of Vuka Africa with Peter van Onselen and Abigail Visagie, ANN7 Prime now too becomes double anchored. Sebenzile is joined behind the desk by ANN7 original, Candy Harris, who most recently anchored weekends.
I think their first broadcast together today, June 22nd, was a bit messy and can be cleaned up going forward. Then again that is what I have come to expect with ANN7 recently: things getting better with time. [I don't want to come across as old fashioned or anything, but two female anchors anchoring a news bulletin is not what I am used to, but will allow it to grow on me]
Chante Jantjies (ANN7's youngest permanent anchor), an ANN7 original who anchored the mid-morning slot before Sibenzile then moved to weekend breakfast because of her studies, takes over from Juliet Newell on Express Lunch, a bulletin Chante has occasionally anchored on Fridays. Express Lunch also changes from airing from 12pm to 2pm to airing from 12pm to 3pm, adding an hour. On leaving weekend Vuka Africa behind, she tweeted: "After a year .. my @ann7tv @VukaAfrica Weekend journey has ended. Thank you to all the early birds who tuned in :)"
The channel's late night block, 10pm to 12am, is now anchored by a rotation of trainee anchors, most of whom are from the ANN7 Anchor Search
In late December 2014, Juliet Newell joined ANN7 and anchored the channel's prime time bulletin ANN7 Prime. In mid January this year, she was named the official anchor of ANN7 Prime.
But now, for some reason, she has not anchored ANN7 Prime for well over a week, with Nzinga Qunta taking up that slot.
So where is Juliet? Anchoring the 2pm slot of news (which is an unbranded straight news bulletin), Nzinga's old slot.
Nzinga Qunta, who has been with ANN7 since inception, has anchored various slots over the year and a few months that the channel has been on air, including weekend prime time, before settling in the 2pm slot.
However, she decided to go back to university this year and has been off air for a while before reappearing as the Prime anchor last Monday
At this point, the channel has not stated whether the timeslot swap is permanent or not to accomodate Nzinga's studies, in the same way they accomodated Chanté Jantjies' studies by moving her off a daily slot to weekend breakfast anchor.
Juliet is still featured on the promotional material for ANN7 Prime, even though she has not appeared on the show in over a week.
Though it is not uncommon for news channels to shift anchors around (I last recall it happening at eNCA when Joanne Joseph was moved from Afternoon News to the midmorning slot), it is odd when it happens to the Prime Time anchor. Imagine Jeremy Maggs all of a sudden just starts anchoring eNCA's News Day with some other anchor takong his slot on News Night without eNCA stating why it is occuring.
Either way, viewers can see Nzinga Qunta is enjoying being the youngest prime time anchor on South African news. She smiles wider than she ever did before during the opening of ANN7 Prime, though I don't remember ever seeing her smile before and she does what Juloet doesn't: promote the heck out of the show on Twitter before it airs, informing her over 18 000 followers about who she is about to interview, something Juliet never did.
ANN7's midmorning anchor (9am-11am), Chante Jantjies, has now been moved to the weekend breakfast slot(6am-9am/12pm) on the channel.
Usually in the broadcast industry, being moved from a channel's week schedule to the weekend will be seen as a demotion, but in the case of Chante, who also happens to be the channel's youngest anchor (as she keeps reminding us on Twitter), she will be studying this year.
Chante is also a model on the side from her now weekend job, winning the 2009 Miss SA Teen crown. Her highlights at ANN7, thus far, include anchoring the channels overnight coverage on Election Day last year.
