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.