In late December 2014, Juliet Newell joined ANN7 and anchored the channel's prime time bulletin ANN7 Prime. In mid January this year, she was named the official anchor of ANN7 Prime.
But now, for some reason, she has not anchored ANN7 Prime for well over a week, with Nzinga Qunta taking up that slot.
So where is Juliet? Anchoring the 2pm slot of news (which is an unbranded straight news bulletin), Nzinga's old slot.
Nzinga Qunta, who has been with ANN7 since inception, has anchored various slots over the year and a few months that the channel has been on air, including weekend prime time, before settling in the 2pm slot.
However, she decided to go back to university this year and has been off air for a while before reappearing as the Prime anchor last Monday
At this point, the channel has not stated whether the timeslot swap is permanent or not to accomodate Nzinga's studies, in the same way they accomodated Chanté Jantjies' studies by moving her off a daily slot to weekend breakfast anchor.
Juliet is still featured on the promotional material for ANN7 Prime, even though she has not appeared on the show in over a week.
Though it is not uncommon for news channels to shift anchors around (I last recall it happening at eNCA when Joanne Joseph was moved from Afternoon News to the midmorning slot), it is odd when it happens to the Prime Time anchor. Imagine Jeremy Maggs all of a sudden just starts anchoring eNCA's News Day with some other anchor takong his slot on News Night without eNCA stating why it is occuring.
Either way, viewers can see Nzinga Qunta is enjoying being the youngest prime time anchor on South African news. She smiles wider than she ever did before during the opening of ANN7 Prime, though I don't remember ever seeing her smile before and she does what Juloet doesn't: promote the heck out of the show on Twitter before it airs, informing her over 18 000 followers about who she is about to interview, something Juliet never did.
Juliet does what she does for the love of it. She has never chased the limelight --- tweeting madly about every little thing she does, or going to every event just to get a happy snap of herself published in some unimportant publication. She is the ultimate professional who is dedicated to her craft and career. Simple as that really.
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