Gareth Edwards Back Behind The Anchor's Desk

Just a few weeks after stepping down from his anchoring role at eNCA to take up a position in the organisation's social media department, Gareth Edwards is back behind the anchor's desk manning NewsNight, where he is filling in for Iman Rappetti and Jeremy Maggs.

It is, however, odd that the channel now breaks the tradition of whoever does the afternoon news becomes the de facto fill in anchor for News Night now that Duduzile Ramela is the Afternoon News anchor.

Now that both of eNCA's prime time anchors are on the radio (both at Power FM) it is to be expected that they will take more days off from manning News Night as doing both radio and television in one day is a gruelling experience. Just ask News Night's first female anchor Redi Direko, who gave up the tv gig to stay on radio as doing both caused her to burn out.

Having Gareth Edwards as the channel's primary fill in anchor is similar to the role Debora Patta played when she was still with the organisation where she would have an off camera role and only appear on camera as a fill in anchor, which was a better choice than having some freelance anchor behind the desk who lacks experience.

I remember one day in particular where Debora was a fill in on what is now Afternoon News as the news at Marikana broke, so having that experienced fill in anchor available ensures that should breaking news occur, the person on screen would know what they doing.

DStv Cans Euronews

After slightly more than 8 years on the DStv platform, the platform has decided to not renew its contract with the Eurocentric news service.

The main reasons cited for the termination is low viewership and poor viewer feedback on the channel.

Back on September 6th 2012, DStv moved the channel off of its extremely favourable channel number 404 where it was just one press of the P+ button away from eNCA which back then had well more than 60% market share, therefore Euronews attracted many casual viewers who were looking for news durin ad breaks.

Where did the platform move the channel to? The abyss of channel number 414, after the Russian centric RT, Parliamentary Service, chinese centric CCTV News and the commerce channels and overall the second last channel of DStv's well more than 100 channels. In other words, a channel number where it could, and did, get lost.

 A few months later in April 2013, the channel was made available to DStv's Family and Compact bouquets as well (It doesn't take too long to figure out why that move was made).

The channel is the only news channel on the platform that is anchor free, depending solely on voice overs and translators for live events. This could be seen as a downfall whereby a channel that lacks any on air personalities is getting lost in a market where personality-driven news is where virtually all news broadcasters are headed to.

Having no anchors also meant that the channel could easily implement what has to be by far its most identifiable trait, being available in multiple languages. These languages were, for the most part: English, French, German, Portuguese and Spanish(all of which, with the exception of Spanish, has their own DStv bouquets). At some point, however, the Portuguese feed was dropped, though there wasn't exactly a viewer outcry.

There are now 15 news and commercial news channels on the DStv platform.

Classic @missokistic: Interesting to compare how CNN International and CNN US chose to frame the #Ferguson decision. pic.twitter.com/2EOFF8JocI

— Russian Market (@russian_market) November 25, 2014

Afrikaans News Channel Switch By The Numbers

With the SABC's Afrikaans news now back on SABC 2 after a stint on SABC 3, I thought it would be interesting to compare the viewership the bulletin experiences on SABC 2 with what it experienced during its stay on SABC 3.

What was initally a channel shift that was to last for 4 weeks  during the Soccer World Cup  ended up being a planned permanent move that saw the overall schedules and alignment of SABC 2 and 3 shifting.

But the move was met by a massive viewer outcry and after a 20 week and 2 day run on SABC3 at 7:30pm, the Afrikaans news was back at 7pm on SABC2. The move back to SABC2 also 'effectively' means that the duration of the news bulletin returned to 1 hour as the Afrikaans team continues their broadcast on The SABC's news channel on DStv 404 at 7:30pm whereas it was merely just a thirty minute simulcast when the bulletin was on SABC 3.

And now, the numbers
For the last full week that the SABC's Afrikaans news was on SABC2 (the week of 2 - 8 June 2014), the bulletin averaged 1 416 000 viewers.

During the following week, the bulletin made the switch to SABC 3 and therefore the Afrikaans news was shown on both channels during one week. For that week, the days it was shown on SABC 2 averaged 1 702 000 viewers. With the shift to SABC 3 during that same week, viewership plummeted 44% to 949 000.

Over the following 20 weeks, the Afrikaans news on SABC3 averaged 967 095 viewers, peaking during the week of the 21st to the 27th of July 1 066 000 viewers, not coming close to the 1.4 million viewers seen just a few weeks prior. In fact, that weeks was only one of three weeks out of the twenty to have more than 1 million viewers, the other being the week of the 7th of July with 1 021 000 viewers and the week of the 8th of September with 1 024 000 viewers.

The bulletin experienced its smallest viewership during the week of the 29th of September with 851 000.

All things Relative
With many things in life, these numbers are related to something else, here being the channel that the news bulletin is on. While on SABC 2, the news bulletin would often feature on that channel's top ten overall most watched programmes, though closer to the bottom of the top ten, while on SABC 3, though the viewership dropped on average quite a bit, it was still a top ten show for SABC 3, though now closer to the top.

This is ABC reaches fewer homes than SABC 2 (and in fact SABC 1 and eTV as well) does and therefore the average SABC 3 programme is less-watched than the average show on any other free to air channel (excluding community broadcasters, of course).

A real life example of the small reach of the channel is that of the Northern Cape where only people in Alexander Bay have access to the channel without having to have a satellite service like DStv or Openview HD.

(As soon as viewership is available for the bulletin's first week back on SABC 2 is available, this article will be updated)

Morning Live's Ayanda-Allie Paine Hosts Crown Gospel Awards

Ayanda-Allie Paine, the news reader on SABC2 and SABC News' Morning Live, co-hosted the 7th annual Crown Gospel Awards this past Sunday, November 23rd.

The awards show aired live on SABC 1 from 8pm until after 10pm, so it is safe to assume Ayanda will take the day off after the awards show.

Her co-host for the evening was Thabo Mdluli.

ANN7's Political Edge Wraps Up For 2014

ANN7's highest rated show, Political Edge, has wrapped up its 2014 season earlier this evening, November 24th.

What silently started out as a little 30 minute politics based chat show on a Sunday night has grown into must watch programming for anyone interested in national politics, expanding to 1 hour permanently after constantly running over time during its first few weeks.

With its ability to attract political heavyweights as guests, the show has become television to talk about, often creeping up Twitter's Trending Topics list which, on a Sunday is usually filled with sports and shows like Idols and Big Brother, is not an easy task to achieve.

The show has also tried out various tweaks to its format, bringing in an in-studio audience to ask guests questions, to just being political news analysis to being in-depth political interviews.

The final edition for the year looked back at the year's top politcal stories with panelists Somadoda Fikeni, Adam Habib and Sipho Seepe.

Just as Politcal Edge has grown as a brand worth watching on a Sunday night, so its host, Hajra Omarjee, who is formerly from what is now eNCA, has grown into a top tier anchor.

 When she initially joined ANN7 to become their Senior Political Correspondent, her work as anchor of their State of the Nation Address coverage and other earlier work after making the jump from just being a journalist made me feel skeptical about having her in this expanded role.

However, she soon grew into the perfect all round 'political correspondent' seamlessly flowing between providing analysis during a midweek news report to moderating a debate on a Sunday night.

Politcal Edge, along with Asanda Magaqa's Between the Lines, made ANN7 a news channel worth watching on a Sunday, a relatively slow news day. But Between the Lines was recently suspended indefintely, so the sudden 'end of season' that Politcal Edge had seems very questionable.

Nonetheless, it will be interesting to see what tweaks are made to the show when it returns, if it does, next year on South Africa's youngest news channel.

Let's Play Spot the errors

Above is one of ANN7's latest adverts, and has become expected of the channel, it is riddled with errors.

Someone should tell whoever put the ad together that "upto" is not a single word. It appears twice.

Whoever compiled the ad probably does not wath ANN7 either. Chante Janjies, at least when she is actually on the air, is not on air for only 30 minutes. Who wouldn't like a 30 minute work day.

Abigail Visage's Express Lunch is  a two hour show, not a one hour show.

The full stops are all over the show: after the sentence, after the time, or just absent

The format of the time is inconsistent as well: The Morning Prime block denotes a ":" between minutes and hours while the Game On block has an "H."

Like the pulse lines that makes it seems as if this is a hospital ad, this ad needs fixing

Avashnee Vandiar: Anchor, Actor

Avashnee Vandiar is ANN7's entertainment news editor, the entertainment anchor on ANN7 Prime and hosts East N Style on the channel on the weekends.

But between anchoring, reporting and presenting from on location, she still seems to find the time to be starring in movies.

Her latest movie, Curse of Highway Sheila, which premiered this past week has been getting positive reviews, and her performance as well.

It will be interesting to see how, if at all, she will cover the movie for her entertainment reporting on the channel.

Either way, it raises the profile of the channel if their entertainment anchor is also a famous local movie star.

Paula Chowles Now eNCA's "Parliamentary Correspondent"

I do not know how long this has been the case, but eNCA is now officially referring to Paula Chowles as the channel's "Parliamentary Correspondent."

Previously, the channel had not given any journalists, other than analysts, any specific title.

Nonetheless, it is a title well deserved and I am sure she will have very few off days considering how often the happenings of parliament are in the news these days.

It is, however, not clear whether she will continue to report on other, non-parliamentary, stories for the channel as well.

Hot 91.9fm Launches With a Few Tv Newsers at the Helm

 

Yesterday,  Monday 17th November 2014, Johannesburg's newest radio station, Hot 91.9fm went live. Included in the stations star studded line up are a few current, and former, tv news personalities.

Sunrise, eTV's breakfast show's long time news anchor, Marc Chase serves as the station's head of news. Many of the  station's younger talent are excited to be working under such an excellent, experienced news reader.

Another eTV Sunrise news reader that will be heard on 91.9fm is Zulu newsreader Mawande Kheswa.

Joining them is yet another former eTV Sunrise news anchor, the shows former Afrikaans news reader, Anlie Hattingh, who still anchors on eNCA on a freelance basis, mainly on weekends and late nights.

Another television news anchor that is heard on the station in the mornings is none other than ANN7's Gladys Sithole, who I am now certain takes over from eNCA's Cathy Mohlanhlana as having the longest work day of any SA news anchor. Gladys now does the news on the radio staion in the mornings, followed by the 2pm shift on ANN7 AND also the Africa Tonight bulletin on ANN7 at 9pm.

These tv newsers join a star studded lineup at Hot 91.9 fm that inclused the likes of Jeremy Mansfield and Mark Pilgrim

South African National Editor's Forum Expresses Concern Over Parliamentary Services' Feed Being Cut

It is something extremely annoying and worrying that I noticed a while back, and now finally a major organisation has issued a statement bringing attention to the interference with the live video feed from the South African Parliament.

Earlier this week, and often before, whenever there were events occuring in parliament the speaker of the house did not want to have seen by viewers at home, she would cut the video feed, blocking citizens of this country where "free press" and "transparency" is championed from observing the actions of publicly-elected officials in parliament.

The statement is below:

"Sanef Media Statement : November 14 2014 

The SA National Editors Forum (Sanef) is disturbed by the continuing interference with the audio and visual feeds from Parliament each time there is chaos in the National Assembly.

On Thursday, the feed was cut off at a time when there were scuffles. This followed two other incidents on August 21 and last week when a member of the opposition was arguing with the Speaker ending with that Member being suspended. In this latter instance, the feed was manipulated to stay focussed on the Speaker, thus not allowing the public to get the full picture of the ongoings in the House.

Sanef on Monday dispatched a letter to the spokesperson of Parliament, Mr Luzuko Jacobs, protesting against the soft censorship that is creeping into the broadcasting of proceedings and has requested a meeting to discuss the issues and find lasting solutions that would allow media to fulfil its constitutional role of informing South Africans fully and in an unbiased manner.

Sanef reiterates its call for Presiding Officers in Parliament to ensure that there is no censorship of the debates in the House irrespective of the content of those debates and the need for Presiding Officers to protect the image of the House.  We also call for a speedy arrangement of the meeting to fully discuss these issues. This more so that at a press conference convened by the presiding officers this morning (Friday), no clarity was provided about who ordered the feed to be cut."
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As a citizen of SA, I echo the sentiment expressed by SANEF and I must say I find it disturbing that I am being blocked from seeing what public officals are doing.

I remember a few weeks back with the initial "Pay back the money" debacle how all the news channels, and also the Parliamentary Service (DStv 408) lost their feed to parliament, and eNCA, who for some reason had access to the feed for a while after the others were reacting as if it was their luck that they were still being able to still have video access.

I mean, why, after 20 years of freedom does a news channel in this country still have to react like "wow, we can see what is happening in parliament." Should transparency today not be something that we should have gotten used to over 20 years of freedom? Why is this still an issue in our country?

I hope some official from parliament responds to the statement from SANEF.


 

BET Cancels 106 & Park

 

BET, DStv 135, has just announced the cancellation of its long running daily Hip Hop entertainment show, 106 & Park.

 The show, which has been on air for 14 years now in various timeslots and formats on BET in the US, will air its final edition this December 19th.

The network does, however, intend to make the brand live as an online only platform at the bet.com website where fans can go and interact, making it seem as if it is a 'logical'  next step for the show, and not just outright cancelling it.

The show will continue to produce coverage of various events for BET for the forseeable future, including their annual New years Eve special and also serve as a pre show for BET events like the BET Awards.

With co host Bow Wow stepping into the acting ring full time as a cast member of the new CSI: Cyber, it is speculated that he would have stepped down as host and that instead of adding yet another host to a show that has seen various host changes over the years, the network just decided to can what seems like a tired brand.

It is unclear whether the network plans on doing another live daily entertainment news show in its place, which airs daily at 8pm in SA.

ANN7, eNCA Carry Nkandla Debate Live

Both eNCA (DStv 403) and ANN7 (DStv 405) carried the Nkandla debate from parliament live today, November 13th, as part of regularly scheduled programming, with both channels ocassionally breaking out of live coverage to do the other headlines as well (There are, after all, other things also happening in the world today).

The state broadcaster, SABC News, did not carry the debate live, opting to go with regularly scheduled progrmming as if nothing is happening in parliament, though they would air highlights of the event during news bulletins.

Whether their choice to not provide rolling coverage is a strategic choice so that anyone wanting local news is not forced to watch the debate on all channels or whether there is any other political reason for not providing rolling coverage is unknown. 

ANN7 Quietly "Suspends" media show Between the Lines

Host on ANN7's Between the Lines, Asanda Magaqa, talking to frequent guest Moegsien Williams, editor of ANN7 and The New Age

ANN7, DStv 405, has silently suspended the excellent media review show, Between the Lines, which is hosted by the wonderful Asanda Magaqa.

I noticed two weeks ago that the show, which brings together various top editors to discuss the weeks top stories and how the media covers them, was no longer on the air.

Later, Asanda herself stated that the show has been "suspended," with no official word from the channel themselves.

Asanda joined ANN7 from Power FM earlier this year to launch Between the Lines, which has, or should I say had, a live weekly premiere on a Sunday morning at 9am.

Since the suspension, Asanda has also removed any references to ANN7 from her twitter profile, so it is highly unlikely that the show would be back, though I would LOVE to be wrong on this one.

Between the Lines, along with Media Monitor on SABC News were the only shows on SA television dedicated solely to covering the media. Though eNCA's Maggs on Media does have a segment about the, uhm, media every now and then, it is a show about advertising (for any writers out there that keep referring to that show as a media review show).

Between the Lines was really one of ANN7's top speciality programmes, along with Political Edge. Both shows never had a dull week in attracting top notch guests to discuss relevant topics.I would rather have had one of the channel's countless entertainment shows cancelled instead.

eNCA's Iman Rappetti Takes Up Permanent Slot at Power FM

Iman Rappetti has joined Power FM

Iman Rappetti, co anchor of eNCA's primetime bulletin has taken the helm of Powr FM's mid morning show as of this past Monday, November 3rd.

Iman has previously done special broadcasts and fill in work at the fledgling radio station but will now become its permanent voice between 9am and 12 pm, replacing Eusebis Mckaiser, who has reached a "mutual" decision to leave the station.


Iman says it is an honour to be on two powerful media platforms (eNCA and PowerFM) and wishes to build on the show's foundations laid by Eusbis.

PowerFM maintains a close relationship with eNCA, co producing coverage of major events like the State of the Nation Address.

Gareth Edwards Fills In on NewsNight

Gr=areth Edwards anchoring eNCA's News Night

Gareth Edwards, the eNCA anchor that will no longer be on screens later this month as he takes up the position of Social Media editor and the organisation, anchored NewsNight this Friday, November 7th.

Over the years he has made a name for himself as the go to guy when the channel needs a fill in anchor, filling in recently on all shows including Morning News Today, the mid morning news and today's NewsNight.

Cathy Mohlanhlana anchored Gareth's usual 4-6pm slot.

Could this be the last time we ever see Gareth Edwards at the helm of NewsNight? Who know, but I really saw him as the guy that would one day replace Jeremy Maggs on a permanent basis once he retires.

Gareth has also been doing the channel's recently launched 9pm show, Moneyline, filling in for Siki Mgadabeli.

Gareth has said that once he becomes head of social media, he will still ocasionally pop up on the channel for various "big headline" stories.

Gareth Edwards to Step Down From Anchoring Duties, Duduzile Ramele to Replace Him

Longtime eNCA anchor, Gareth Edwards, who currently sits at the helm of Afternoon News, will be stepping away from the anchoring desk.

He will now become the channel's Social Media Editor, taking over from Damon Boyd, who stepped down in September after 2  years in that position.

Gareth wanted to take a step in a new direction, “Having worked in the TV space for six years I am looking forward to the new challenge of bringing digital and TV closer together,” says Gareth Edwards, Social Media Editor at eNCA.

As someone that follows Gareth on twitter, I can see Gareth perfectly fitting the new position like a hand in a glove. he is usually the one that does the news breaking on my Twitter stream and does a great deal to promote eNCA's onscreen content.

Gareth is, according to me, the biggest eNCA success story that there is. His onscreen journey is nothing short of a stereotypical "climb up the corporate ladder." At inception, he was a sports anchor for the channel, then he became the preferred sports channel for flagship show, News Night, then he did late nights, holidays and weekends as a general news anchor, followed by stints at the helm of the channel's breakfast show, Morning News Today and the modmorning news, before most recently settling in as the anchor of Afternoon News.

He has had perfect chemistry with whomever he has anchored with. They include Eleni Giokos, who is now at Bloomberg Africa, Lerato-Allie Paine, who is now at the SABC's Morning Live, Joanne Joseph, who still does the mid morning news and Duduzile Ramele, who will replace him as anchor of Afternoon News (Personally I feel this is the wrong choice as Joanne should've come to the afternoon or Cathy Mohlanhlana, who does mid morning nes AND eNews Prime Time. She could have done with a better schedule.).

Duduzile is, of course, no stranger to eNCA viewers. She is frequently seen doing the late night news or weekend and public holiday news. But it is apparently her work done during election coverage and the coverage of Nelson Mandela's memorial last year that caught the eye of eNCA's big wigs.

 “We are delighted that Dudu is joining our permanent team. She distinguished herself during the Nelson Mandela memorial coverage and the national elections with her maturity, intelligence and a keen interest in current affairs,” says Channel News Director Mapi Mhlangu.