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| (c) eTV |
That show will now air at 5:30pm, which means that if you do not have pay television in South Africa, you will be subjected to news bulletins on three of the four free to air channels that broadcast nationally: Xhosa News on SABC1 (which is Siswati and Ndebele on some days), Venda/Tsonga News on SABC2, and now the Sotho/Zulu news on eTV.
This is the first time that eTV has ever changed the time at which any of its news bulletins air. Prior to the introduction of the Zulu/Sotho news, eNews Early Edition was a short English news bulletin that aired at 6pm that served as a promo for what to expect in the 7pm Prime Time news.
eTV will now be airing chat shows from sister channel, eKasi+, at 6pm, with Katch it With Khanyi airing on Mondays with the addictive (at least to me) Eksê: Let's Talk with Masechaba Lekalake airing Thursdays to Fridays. Some of the programming that has been airing during the 5:30pm slot, which has not been doing too well in the ratings, on eTV now airs on Fridays at 6pm.
This now also means that with the exception of the 30 minute Zulu news bulletin, Trevor Gumbi's comendy and a fitness show, all of eKasi+'s original programming now also airs on eTV. This therefore does not give potential viewers any incentive to subscribe to the OpenviewHD platform, where eKasi+ exclusively airs on, as that channel was seen as the best channel available on the platform exclusively.
It is to be seen how shifting the bulletin up 30 minutes affects its viewership (which is usually about 1 million viewers), or the viewership of the rest of eTV's early prime time schedule, which hasd been performing sluggishly since SABC1 converted their series Skeen Saam into a soap to compete with Rhythm City, a show that has usually been either eTV's show with the highest viewership or second highest viewership, alternating with Scandal.
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