South Africa's only independent free to air broadcaster, eTV, has announced massive changes to the channel's prime time schedule.
These changes seem to be a continuation of the changes the channel saw late last year with the introduction of the eKasi+ shows, Katch it with Khanyi and Lets Talk with Masechaba Lekalake, in the 6pm slot and the shifting of the Sotho news to 5:30pm, in direct competition with the Sotho bulletin on SABC 2.
The first major change is the introduction of a Zulu-langauge news bulletin in the 6:30pm timeslot. What other websites and news sources would be telling you is that this is a new bulletin, but it is not. The eNews Zulu bulletin has been running for a while now at 8pm on eKasi+ (Openview HD 105).
At this point, eTV has not indicated what happens to that slot: does it fall away, does it take on another local language, does it become a repeat of the 6:30pm bulletin or does it remain as a live half hour of news?
With Zulu news on eTV at 6:30pm, viewers now also no longer need to wait until 7pm for a Zulu bulletin on SABC1, whichvis a rather competitive move by eTV.
(It is not clear whether the bulletin will air on weekends as well)
Next among the changes is the shifting of the struggling soap Rhythm City from 6:30pm to 7pm, in direct competition with SABC3's Isidingo, which has found great success (a doubling of viewership) since moving to 7pm and out of direct competition with the other 6:30pm soaps.
Rhythm City now starts a triple bill of daily soaps on eTV with Scandal following it at 7:30pm, the only show to remain in its old slot.
Scandal is then followed by eTV's new Telenovela, Ashes To Ashes, which stars a large amount of Generations alumni in it.
eTV's long running English News Bulletin, eNews Prime Time, shifts a wopping 90 minutes later to 8:30pm. [analysis to follow in an article of its own]
It is unclear whether eNews Late Edition, which airs at 10pm, a mere hour after the end of eNews Prime Time.
(eNews Prime Time's weekend slots remain unaffected)
eKasi: Our Stories now moves to the Tuesday 9pm slot, which means that current affairs programme, Check Point with Nkepile Mabuse also needs to move, but the channel has not said what will happen to that show.
Another current affairs show that is affected is Late Night News woth Loyiso Gola, which currently airs at 8pm on Thursdays, which it can now obviously no longer do.
Overall, this now means that eTV drops the weak programming they have been airing at 8pm and that they now boasts the most packed schedule of any free to air broadcaster (meaning it becomes harder for them to reschedule programming if they want to air specials like the State of the Nation Address).
It also seems as if eTV has now given up hope on their Openview HD product. Last year two talk shows, along with the rest of the magazine shows on eKasi+ were shifted to eTV, now the Zulu news bulletin follows suit. They also earlier said theyvwould down the line add a telenovela to that channel. Now they are adding a telenovela, just not on eKasi+.
The changes come into effect March 2nd.
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