By far the channel with the best coverage of the 2015 Sate of the Nation Address, eNCA showed viewers what they are really capable of.
The coverage was anchored.from 4pm by Oman Rappetti and Ben Said, who were at the Parliamentary precinct. They were joined in their makeshift studio by a different political analyst every hour, as opposed to having a whole panel sittimg there for a full hour (even though the analysts were great, eNCA viewers missed the usual duo of Justice Malala and Angelo Fick).
The 6pm analyst, Judith February, stayed with them through the rest of the evening as well and provided great analysis to whatever was happening in parliament and, when needs be, did the anchor's job of providing a 'play-by-play' commentary as well.
eNCA, whose coverage was broadcast on free-to-air broadcaster etv as well, provided comprehensive coverage of what happened outside of parliament as well, be it the moment the EFF was thrown out of parliament and the DA left. However, trying to juggle way too many things did kind of bite them in the butt when they opted to cover remarks from the DA on why they left while President Zuma was speaking already. In a perfect world and in a situation like this, a news channel would realise that they are not the only channel airring the same thing and in this situation they could've covered what was going on outside more because President Zuma's speech was being seen on five other channels as well, none of which had the rrsources eNCA had to cover what was goingvon outside, or as in the case of the SABC, flat out ignoring it.
Way too much Sample Group
The evening before SONA, eNCA announced that they would do a first of its kind in South Africa experiment by having a sample group of thirty urban middle class Gauteng residents, a way too specific and unrepresentitive demographic, provide minute by minute feed back on the address.
The group were hosted in the eNCA studio used by Maggs on Media and the Afrikaans eNuus bulletin (which relocated to the eNews Prime Time studio for the evening, see picture below), the only studio equipped to have an audience (the last time I remember them having an audience there was back when they hosted a debate between political parties during the 2011 Election season).
The segments were hosted by News Night anchor, Jeremy Maggs (for some reason this guy never goes to Cape Town for the SONA or the budget speech) and he was joined by Social Media Editor Gareth Edwards who acted as a sort of roaming reporter in the crowd. It would have been better if they had Siki Mgabadeli doing these segments as she is the host of a similarbstyle show, The Big Debate.
However, it soon became apparent that the channel would focus way too much on this focus group, dedicating way too much time to it and doing way too many inserts on it.
Guess where eNCA was the once President Zuma stopped speaking? No, not outside Parliament where the other news channels were where there were so many great potential guests, but in Johannesburg speaking to a group of people taken off the street.
Yes, doing thatvkind of thing can have value, but eNCA should have followed CNN's footsteps whereby they only cross to the group at the end of the evening when all the events are said and done and there is not any other more news worthy things happening.
No More PowerFM
This was the first time in a while that eNCA did a special broadcast from parliament without the guys from Power FM, which is something that was not missed at all, with thebexception of Ursula Tshikana's red carpet expertise.
No comments:
Post a Comment