REVIEW: Vuzu Relaunches Flagship Daily Entertainment News Show, V Entertainment

Vuzu presenter Shelton Forbes in the channel's new studio

M-net's youth-centric brand, Vuzu, today launched the "amplified" version of its daily flagship entertainment news shows, V Entertainment. The relaunch of the show coincides with the launch of the second Vuzu channel, Vuzu Amp, which is available exclusively to DStv Premium subscribers.

As part of the show's relaunch, the show finally moved into a real studio, dropping the green screen that was used for the greater part of its history (They did have a dull real studio at launch in 2009, but it was dropped at the end of their first season). The new studio, mostly in glossy black with pink elements and with multiple cameras, is a welcomed upgrade from the single camera green screen format that had been used in the past.

The new graphics is also more well done than previously though nothing very special.

For the relaunch, the show was hosted by three presenters instead of just one, the three longest running presenters on the show. In order of length as a presenter, they were Siyabonga "Scoop" Ngwekazi, Lalla Hirayama and Dineo Moeketsi. However, Siya's appearance was billed as a special appearance since he officially left the show a few months ago when he moved to Channel O to launch Turn Up. Vuzu does, however, say that Siya will be appearing on the show sporadically in the future.

New graphics, a new studio, being broadcast in High Definition and having three presenters instead of one did not save what was a terrible show, content-wise at least, when compared to what viewers had come to expect from V Entertainment. Instead of being the jam packed entertainment news show viewers had come to expect, the show seemed to be filled with more banter between presenters and the promotion of what will now become a daily poll on the show than anything else. By 22 minutes after the start of the show, it was all over and they played out with a new music video from singing sensation, Bucie.

They just spent way too much time talking about a poll that does not belong on this show. Yes, social networking integration is good, but that should have remained on the V Prime segments.

Reviews on social networks for the new V Entertainment are mixed. The only thing people are complimenting from the show is its set, while those that critiqued the content side of the show, what the show should really be about, described it as a "yawnfest," and rightfully so.

The manner in which the channel promoted the relaunch of the show, though not giving specifics, made it seem as if, heck, the show was being improved, but that was definitely not what happened.

As a tv channel (a medium of communication), one would expect the channel to communicate details about the relaunch ahead of time, but that was totally not the case. Before today, it was not known whether the show would remain in the 6pm time slot or change time slots. The show's timeslot became even more questionable this past Sunday when on Idols, Proverb said that it would air at 5pm instead. Up until today it was never confirmed whether the V-Prime segments that air throughout primetime would air on Vuzu or Vuzu Amp with the channel only today announcing the finer details of the whole situation. It is even unclear as to how many presenters will be presenting the show from tomorrow. One? Two? More?

Going forward, V Entertainment has a lot of room for improvement, the only sad part about that is that the room for improvement after today's show is greater than that of prior episodes of a show that wasn't in need of a fix now being broken.