eNCA to Scale Back African DIvision While Sister Company Scales Back Documentary Units

eNews Channel AFRICA is to scale back its African operations as parent company, Sabido Investments, decided to cut its loss making ventures, of which eNCA's Africa division is one.

The reasons for the scaling back of the Africa division are that the eNCA Africa Edition bulletins have been cut by the UK's Africa Channel (which eNCA produced), along with eNCA being pulled off the SKY platform in the UK a while ago (which itself was a cost cutting measure because the channel was paying to be on the platform and not the conventional deal where the platform pays the channel for carriage).

It is unclear how far these cuts will go or how it affects on air reporters like the Chief Africa Correspondent, Robyn Kriel, but it is speculated that the bureaus in the rest of Africa, like the ones in Kenya and Nigeria, will be closed.

It is also unclear what will happen to Africa 360, the channel's pan African weekly magazine show, though it is expected that the on the ground reports will disappear in favour of just being a debate programme.

Though eNCA is looking to cut back on African news, don't expect African news to disappear from the channel though. Viewers can still see African news on eNCA, but it will instead just be a voice over narrating a story that some news wire is reporting with video someone else has gathered (or archived video) as opposed to seeing someone hold the iconic blue mic with the 'e' on it in some other African country.

Another business unit that will be affected is Sabido's factual division and Natural History, both of which are being closed.

If you think the loss of Sabido's factual division is minor because you have never heard of them before, think again. Some of the documentaries they have produced include the award winning 1994-The Bloody Miracle and The Vula Connection (which is nominated in three categories at this year's South African Film and Television Awards ), both of which have aired on eNCA multiple times, as well as documentaries that have aired on FOX Crime (DStv 126) under the Case Files: Africa banner.

On the closure of the factual and Natural History Unit, the statement from Sabido says, "These operations have been incurring sustained losses for many years and do not appear to have the potential to turn around in the future."