News On Christmas

I always wondered why CNN anchor Richard Quest always seemed to work on Christmas Day each and every year. He answered this question in a very season appropriate tweet:

I love anchoring on #Xmas the stories are lovely. The pictures are happier. Yes there is sadness and misery but for few hours we can smile
— Richard Quest (@richardquest) December 24, 2014

In South Africa, like in all other countries, the schedules of 24 hour news channels are usually tweaked quite heavily for Christmas Day as everyone tries to spend time with family, but someone still has to man the 24/7 live news operation.

For the first time, South Africa's 24 hour news channels went live at 7am instead of the usual 6am switch on.

Florence was standing in on Morning News Today for both Dan Moyane and Uveka Rangappa. This was followed by Cathy Mohlanhlana taking her usual slot. At 4pm, Xoli Mngambi was in for Duduzile Ramele on Afternoon News from 4pm and Gareth Edwards took over on Newsnight, the show that he seems to now be anchoring every Friday, from 6pm. The channel featured various taped programming throughout the day and ended the broadcast day before 11pm. Interestingly, the eNCA Moneyline and Tech Report episodes that premiered today featured mostly new content, which is to be appreciated at a time of year when all the channels, not just the news channels, do their "reflection" episodes.

On SABC News it seemed as if it was just another broadcast day, which is something that would be appreciated by someone looking for live news while everyone else was in taped content. Most of their regular anchors were either anchoring their shows, or, as in Ayanda-Allie Paine's case on Morning Live, providing live reports. Morning Live was also broadcast exclusively on the SABC News channel as SABC 2 was broadcasting festive films.

On ANN7, the channel that prides itself as being the "live events and analysis" news network of the country, they did just that:live events, with a live broadcast of a Christmas service from the Regina Mundi church in Soweto from 9am, but this was preceded by a full hour of fluffy taped programming. In Prime time, Gladys Sitholea nchored the 7pm hour which is usually ANN7 Prime but was unbranded for the evening. She was preceded by sports anchor Fahraaz Patel who did the afternoon shift of news (because these days sports anchors, reporters and entertainment anchors all get to do the news on ANN7). The channel also aired a 2hour edited version of their South African of the Year Awards that was held eariler this year.

No matter which channel you watched, the news was the same: Christmas, Christmas deaths, Christmas births, oh and a side note on the AU headquarters being attacked.