ANN7 "Anchor Search" Goes to Kwazulu-Natal

ANN7's "Anchor Search" will be stopping in Suncoast, KZN this weekend.

This comes after the "Anchor Search" made stops in Johannesburg and Bloemfontein over the last few weeks.

Initially I was against any news channel having an "Anchor Search" for credibility reasons, but then I actually found out how it works and discovered that it is not an "Anchor Search" at all: the winner, and others that stand out for the judges, gets offered a place in ANN7's Cadet Programme, where young journalists are introduced to the world of broadcast journalism at what seems like a young journo's dream: the latest newsroom automation systems, cutting edge electronic news gathering technology and a network of sharp, young journalists and experienced editors."

 From the presser: "The trendsetting 24-hour news channel is looking for vibrant, command for fact reporting, confident and passionate people for news."

Comedy Central Sets Date for Premiere of The Tonight Show with Trevor Noah

Comedy Central has finally set the date for the premiere of Trevor Noah's new gig as host of their flagship show, The Daily Show.

"The Daily Show with Trevor Noah" premieres on September 28th in the US, with the South African premiere less than 24 hours later on the 29th. Comedy Central Africa is yet to finalise a timeslot for the new season of The Daily Show.

MAKING THE CASE: Where Is the African News?

Today the South African news channels celebrated Africa Day, but how African are they?

It seems like, to the local news channels, "Africa" is just an accessory; eNews Channel AFRICA, AFRICAN News Network 7 and  The South African Broadcast Commission News Channel (who refers to themselves as "Africa's News Leader).

Yet when it comes to Africa, the news channels that pride themselves on an apparent African identity are more than willing to talk about Africa, yet they have no reporters on the ground in the rest of the continent.


When it comes to 'telling African' stories, the domestic news channels are more than able to do so, but they depend on news reports from foreign news agencies like the Associated Press or Reuters for video material and in depth details of the news. They are not able to find African news themselves. In fact if it were not for western news organisations there would be no African news on South African television


eNCA had an amazing African news division, eNCA Africa, that was under the helm of Chris Maroleng for quite a while. It was made up of African based reporters telling African stories, there was a daily three hour "Africa Edition" programme providing African news bulletins, there was both a West and East African bureau (which was led by the excellent Robyn Kriel) and also the weekly Africa 360 news magazine programme.

All that is gone: Chris Maroleng left the organisation to work at MTN, "Africa Edition" was quietly ended, the West and East African bureaus were shut down with Robyn Kriel becoming the CNN's East African Correspondent (the first person to ever hold that title at the American-based news organisation) and Africa 360 getting canned as well. Why? eNCA's managing director of news, Patrick Conroy, is quoted as saying, "here was essentially no operational need for the TV news feed any longer." This sentiment was echoed by eNCA's parent company stating it was at the time shutting down its unprofitable ventures.


SABC News just this past Friday went live on DStv's Rest of Africa platform (because for some reason there is DStv South Africa and DStv Rest of Africa). This was celebrated at a gala event attended by President Zuma who said it was time for Africans tot ell African stories, something we have heard too often before. While covering the event, co anchor Ayanda-Allie Paine also curiously referred to the SABC News Channel as the SABC African News Channel, which could hint that the SABC is joining the fad of including "Africa" in the name without it meaning much. There is rumours that the channel is planning on launching an African news bulletin or news magazine soon, though nothing is confirmed yet.



The only South African news channel that currently has a daily African news bulletin is ANN7 with "Africa Tonight" which is hosted by Gladys Sithole. Though it is a daily African news bulletin, it cannot achieve much without the channel actually having any reporters based outside of South Africa. This means that Africa Tonight ends up being a daily chat show about African current affairs along with African news sourced from, again, western news agency like the Associated Press. Occasionally it will feature the odd Skype call to someone outside of South African to discuss an African news topic.

Nigerian-based Arise News had more accredited media covering the South African State of the Nation Address this year that South African-based ANN7. How many reporters do you expect the South African news channels to have at the Nigerian equivalent of the SONA Address? Nought is the answer.

Even Chinese news channel CCTV has a daily one hour African news programme

What is even worse is that American-based news organisations are doing even better at coring African news than the South African news channels that boast about their "Africanness." For example, the aforementioned Robyn Kriel at CNN. One could then argue that CNN should have someone in Africa considering they have an international network as well (they have multiple reporters covering the continent) and thus should cover Africa. But then CBS News, a news brand exclusively available on American television, puts the South African news channels to shame. CBS News has African Correspondent Debora Patta going to places in Africa to tell stories not told by channels that are based in Africa and getting high quality exclusive visuals, something the South African news channels do not usually make an effort to get. Even financial news channel, Bloomberg, has a decent presence in the Africa that exists beyond the borders of Africa.

For this month of May, however, all the South African news channels have been creating the illusion that they are premiere African news destinations by covering things like the Pan African Parliament and having in studio discussions with guests from across the continent. But the thing is these people are in South Africa, and so is the Pan African Parliament. There was not much effort for the local news channels to get to these African stories.


It is rather disappointing that the South African news channels get to flaunt the "African" accessory as they choose without actually bringing something to the African news table that they did not get from a different news organisation. I really hope that there will come a time when Africans no longer have to depend on western news organisations like the AP to tell African stories. This becomes especially more important now that the African story becomes more important than ever before and needs to be told.

Today, May 22nd, the SABC News Channel expanded their footprint on the DStv platform by the platform now making the channel available in all territories in which the platform operates.

To celebrate the launch, or expansions rather, the channel held an event similar to the one just the other day about the launch of the SABC Encore channel aand was broadcast on the SABC News Channel. 

However, President Zuma was in attendance this time and spoke about the expansion.

The coverage on the SABC News Channel was anchored by Peter Ndroro and Ayanada-Allie Paine.

 The President's speech was also carried on ANN7, which was interesting considering the event was about a direct competitor of theirs.

Among the topics covered were the SABC's plans for the long delayed Digital Migration, though he did not mention anything new.

President Zuma also spoke about the SABC News Channel's coverage of the Pan African Parliament this past week. They were the only channel to provide rolling coverage of the event. He also spoke about how the channel is an excellent way to celebrate Africa month and that the channel helps to reinforce African union and development, among other things. Also on African coverage, Zuma spoke about the channel's plans to provide in depth coverage of the World Economic Forum on Africa, and the African Union Summit.

Zuma spoke about how the channel can be used as a self-educational vehicle of patriotism and African identity and also how it allows Africans to now sell Africa better by giving news from an African perspective and not the negative way international broadcasters have been selling Africa. He further said that this doesn't mean that bad events won't be covered.

Strange things Zuma mentioned included that the SABC News Channel 'reached 24 million'  South African households per week, which is strange considering that DStv, the only carrier of the channel, has about 5 million subscribers in SA.

Furthermore, he said that the channel will now be available in 50 countries now, which I found very strange as DStv doesn't broadcast to many Northern African countires. But I do not blame Zuma for this blunder because DStv themselves have punted the shady claim of being in '50 countries' when speaking about the coverage of the Channel O Awards, among other events.

After President Zuma spoke, the SABC's head of news, Jimi Matthews also spoke

eTV Shuffles Prime Time Schedule (Again), Moves Zulu Bulletin to eKasi+

eTV has announced that from Monday, June 15th, the channel will be reshuffling its prime time lineup just a few months after another shakeup.

This is most likely as a result of very disappointing viewership figures.

The channel's Zulu news bulletin only managed to attract 375 000 viewers during the week of May 4th. SABC 1's Zulu news bulletin that airs at 7pm averaged a whopping 3,249,000 in the same week. In comparison, the Sotho news bulletin that was cancelled to make space for the Zulu bulletin regularly saw viewership of above 500 000.

The Zulu news bulletin, which currently airs at 6:30pm on both eTV and eKasi+ now loses its slot on eTV and becomes exclusive to eKasi+.

eTV's English news bulletin, which is now anchored by Duduzile Ramela, only averaged a mere 599 000 viewers in the week of May 4th. The first week after moving from its long running 7pm slot to 8:30pm, the bulletin averaged 880 000 viewers and has dropped ever since. In comparison, before moving from 7pm the bulletin absolutely never had less than 1 million viewers, even attracting 2 million viewers on rare occasion.

The English news bulletin now moves into the 6:30pm timeslot where it will yet again compete directly with SABC3' English news bulletin, which itself used to be at 7pm before being moved to the earlier slot where it would not compete directly with what was at the time a very strong English bulletin on eTV.

Other changes include the 6pm chat shows moving to 5:30pm and Tyler Perry shows taking their former slots, meaning that eTV's 3 hours of nonstop new local programming every day (which I found very impressive). At 8:30pm the channel will feature local unscripted fare on Mondays and Tuesday with Shuga (yes, Shuga that we have seen multiple times on MTV Base, eKasi+, the BET channels and Ebony Life TV, if I am not missing any channels) on Wednesdays.

Overall, the shakeup does nothing about the one hour of lost news content eTV cancelled when they shuffled their lineup for the first time (Sotho Bulletin and eNews Late Edition.).

Viewership figures from tvsa.co.za

ANN7 Anchors Fall Short on Reality Shows

A few weeks ago I wrote about two ANN7 anchors, Lauren Jenae and Mbali Nkosi, who decided to try their luck at stardom in the typical celebrity sense by entering BET's Top Actor and Mzansi Magic's Big Brother Mzansi, respectively.

Unfortunately this past week both of them were eliminated from their respective reality shows.

Lauren made it to the top seven on Top Actor, while Mbali made it to the final week of Big Brother, ultimately finishing third. 

Though I am against news anchors doing reality shows in search of stardom (I mean, it is going to be hard watching Mbali on ANN7 again after viewers got to watch her bath on Big Brother), it was nice seeing a dimension to them that they seem to be stifling behind the news desk and would be nice to see them bring it to the news and liven up their rather dull on air presentation.

Lauren was back on air this past weekend (and is filling in for Karabo Yibe this week).

[On a somewhat related note, Lauren Jenae has joined the on air team at Hot 91.9fm, the same station where fellow ANN7er Gladys Sithole is at]

eNCA Crosses Twitter Milestone

@eNCAnews, the official Twitter hashtag of South Africa's most popular news channel, eNCA, has this past week crossed the 500 000 followers milestone.

This comes two years after the channel decided to heavily expand its online presence.

The only local 'news' channel with more followers is Supersport Blitz.

In comparison, the @SABCNewsOnline account currently has 377 000 followers while @ANN7tv has 31 300 followers.

Back Again (Sighs): 'GameOn!' Back on the ANN7 Schedule

ANN7 has once again re added GameOn!, the channel's sports bulletin, back to its schedule.

This follows a few weeks after the show presented by Mahreen Chenia was dropped from the schedule a few weeks ago, when the channel tweaked their prime time schedule.

Well that schedule has been re tweaked, again (because apparently viewers will just eat whatever you feed them whenever you decide to feed it to them), with the show now back on at 6:30pm and repeated at 10:30pm.

Changes in this 'season' of GameOn! (because the channel thinks its a channel that airs episodic tv shows) include a slightly tweaked graphics pack (the only thing that changes as much as the schedule with this channel is its graphics and not anything with actual journalism, unfortunately), now airing completely from the interview section of the studio (which now has two portable monitors) and, more importantly, now airing from Monday to Friday, whereas in the past it only aired Tuesday through Thursday.

If you into sports news, viewers tend to say this show is quite well done, so check it out.

eNCA Adds Annette Venter to Weather Line Up

eNCA has added meteorologist, Annette Venter to the group's weather presenting line up.

She joined the organisation earlier this month.

Annette studied for a Bachelor of Science in Maths at the University of Pretoria whilst doing meteorology as one of her courses. However, she soon fell in love with the weather predicting course and in her third year of studying changed her major to meteorology. In 2014 she completed her Honors in Meteorology. 

Annette will primarily do the weather bulletin on eNuus, which airs daily on Kyknet and Kyknet & Kie. She will also be seen on the english eNCA 24 hour channel on occassion, like the other Afrikaans weather anchors.

SABC Newsroom Guest Smokes Marujuana During On Air Interview

The formula for the SABC Newsroom show on the SABC News Channel at 9am is very simple: a technologically driven news bulletin simulcast on Youtube and engaging with viewers on social media. It is that simple. Well at least on paper.

But the bulletin just seems to court controversy more than any other bulletin on the SABC News Channel.

Today, May 11th SABC Newsroom guest, Andre du Plessis, decided he was going to start smoking marujuana, an illegal substance in South Africa, live on a national broadcast platform that is owned by the government of South Africa.

Just last month the actual anchor of Newsroom, Eben Jansen, was suspended for his conduct during an interview with a member of the EFF.

The strange part of the marujuana incident is that the SABC actually posted a clip of the incident on their Youtube page (something they did not have to do as it just draws attention to the situation and considering the whole bulletin is uploaded to Youtube in any case) with the description/statement , "The SABC Broadcaster and the SABC Newsroom does not condone the actions of our guest Andre Duplessis. The views expressed in this video clip/ interview are not that of the SABC and Associates, but that of the guest."

What makes thing even weirder, so to say is that there seems to be cheering du Plessis from whoever is behind the camera in the Cape town studio where he was for the interview, as pointed out by one of the people who have commented on the video.

The incident also caused the term "Dagga" to trend on twitter earlier today.

ALL News Channels Cover the DA's Federal Congress

As one would expect, each of South Africa's24 hour news channels covered the election of Mmusi Maimane as the new leader of official opposition, the Democratic Alliance.

eNCA's coverage was anchored by Cathy Mohlahlana in Johannesburg, who was joined in studio by eNCA Commentator, Angelo Fick, who has been providing analysis all weekend long already. Joanne Josephs anchored things from Port Elizabeth. After Maimane's inaugurate address, eNCA was the first to interview him immediately after.

ANN7's coverage of the event was anchored by Vuka Afrka anchor, Peter van Onselen in their studio. Reporter, Ken Brandt was on the ground for the channel.
 
While eNCA had the first interview with the newly elected Mmusi Maimane, SABC News Channel (which was simulcast on SABC2) had the first interview with out going DA leader, Helen Zille. Though the interview had what one would expect about the transition of power in the DA, the crux of the interview came down to Allistair Sparks' controversial comment when he mentioned Apartheid architect, Hendrik Verwoed as one of the 'smartest politicians' he knew. One comment from Zille that stood out in this damage control interview was "Evil people are not necessarily stupid people" and that was, as she termed it, 'scary.' The interview was conducted by the SABC's anchor for the day, contributing editor, Vuyo Mvoko, who was also in Port Elizabeth

24 Hour News Viewership for April 2015

Thanks once again to the Twitter account of eNCA's Managing Director, Patrick Conroy, we have a glimpse at the viewership, or at least audience share, for the 24 hour news channels available on DStv.

eNCA
By far the most impressive statistic seen in the graph is eNCA's ability to still boast more than half of the share of viewership (51%), despite the increased competition. Of all the news channels in South Africa, eNCA is the one that tweaks it schedule the least: while others have constantly changed their schedules, the eNCA schedule has been in place for long now. Its been well over a year since viewers have been tuning in to the excellent Uveka Rangappa and Dan Moyane in the morning to Jeremy Maggs and Iman Rappetti in the evening. The chemistry is there and so is the talent. Though I may not always be fond of their repetitive 30 minute format, it is that exact 30 minute format that keeps casual viewers tuning in: news at the top and bottom of the hour, sports 20 minutes later with weather near the end of the 30 minute cycle. It just works. Coupled with this is their excellent high quality live coverage of news events, particularly the Xenophobic outbreak that took place in April. The final part of their formula? A brand that is well known for news and not controversies like the other local news channels (for example, SABC News Channel being in the spot light due to the Eben Jansen saga), a brand that resonates with viewers that do not traditionally watch news. When news breaks, it is these casual viewers who help eNCA to stay at the top of the mountain.

SABC News Channel
SABC News Channel, now solidly in second place, a position it took from Sky News back when SABC News Channel was launched, itself has seen steady gains in viewership, growing from 9% in its first few months, to 17% in June last year (the last time Conroy gave us access to this information ) to now 19%. That is the good part. Now for the bad part: When compared to just the previous month (March, which can be seen in the table above) SABC News Channel is actually down 12% Why is that bad? April was a major news month in South Africa with the Xenophobic attacks, something that would drive people to watch news. Instead, when news breaks, it seems as if viewers are actually tuning out of the SABC News Channel to watch that breaking news elsewhere.

ANN7
South Africa's third most watched channel, ANN7, continues to see growth as they continue to tweak their lineup. In April the channel tweaked their late prime time schedule, introducing a repeat of Buzz @ANN7 in prime time, canning the repeat of the sports bulletin and a moving around of live news bulletins and then later in the month the introduction of a repeat of the daily Africa Tonight 90 minutes after the original airing. This is in addition to the introduction of new and returning magazine shows like The Torque Show, Face in the Crowd and a weekly interview show, Straight Talk, with Ralph Motshekga The channel has by far the most complicated lineup of the news channels and these constant changes don't make things any easier for viewers that want news on a news channel. Like eNCA, they also seemed to have benefitted from the heavy news cycle experienced in April, being up 3.5% since March.

CNBC Africa: What on Earth?
Like its American counterpart, CNBC Africa seems to be experiencing audience declines. Yes it is a niche channel and would therefore have low viewership, that is not the problem. The worrying part is that the channels audience share of "0%" is actually down from 2% seen 10 months ago, and also 2% in November 2013 (the only data that is publicly available). However, one has to keep in mind that this viewership is South African viewership only and excludes viewership for the rest of Africa where the channel is rather popular.

Other Channels
So with all the South African news channels experiencing audience share growth over the last few months, that growth must have came at the expense of some other channels. Sky News, CNN International and Al Jazeera are all down, with Sky News' 6% nearly half of what it was just a few months ago (11%)


For the statisticians out there, once again the viewership follows a normal sort of distribution when rearranged by channel numbers with eNCA at the peak in the middle with viewership then steadily dropping off the further you go from eNCA on either side of the channel spectrum.

BREAKING: Robyn Kriel Leaves eNCA to Join CNN

eNCA's excellent Chief African Correspondent, Robyn Kriel, has left South Africa's most watched news channel to take up the position of East African Correspondent at CNN.

This follows about a month after she reported for CNN on the Kenyan university massacre. At the time she reported for CNN as part of CNN's affiliation agreement with eNCA.

Robyn Kriel holds degrees in broadcast journalism and musical theatre from Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, Texas. Her first job in broadcast journalism was at Texas station KWTX. In 2007 she moved back to her home country of Zimbabwe and did freelance reporting for networks like CNN, ABC in the US, BBC, and M-Net's Carte Blanche, among others.

 She moved to South Africa to join what was then called the eNews Channel (now eNCA) in June of 2008 and was a weekend, late night, holiday and fill in anchor. In 2010 Robyn attended Duke University as a Menell Fellow, representing eNCA. In August of 2011, she took up the position of East Africa Bureau Chief at the time the channel was expanding its coverage on African issues. In October last year when the Africa division was restructured, Robyn was given the title of Chief African correspondent, though still based in Kenya.

Below is a video from 2011 when US first lady Michell Obama paid tribute to her at the Young African Women Leaders Forum:


One could speculate that her jumping to CNN could have something to do with eNCA recently shutting down its African division, which has resulted in staff layoffs and the cancellation of the long running African news magazine show, Africa 360.

At CNN Kriel will continue to provide the excellent coverage of happenings in East Afican countries like Kenya, where the government is continuing to tackle the issue of militant group al-Shabaab, among other news.

A few of Robyn's now former colleagues and other personalities have taken to Twitter to congratulate her on the move. Here are some of them:
eNCA's Social Media Editor (and fill in anchor), Gareth Edwards tweeted:

I could not be prouder of my (now former) colleague @robynkrielCNN who has joined @cnni as a Correspondent. Talented beyond measure!!

— Gareth Edwards (@GarethEdwardsSA) May 1, 2015

Morning News Today anchor, Dan Moyane, tweeted:

All the best @robynkrielCNN. Will miss chatting to you regularly from Nairobi,

— Dan Moyane (@danmoyane) May 1, 2015

South African and Current CNN Anchor, Robyn Curnow tweeted:

You're going to be great. It's wonderful for CNN (and Africa) @robynkrielCNN: @ferialhaffajee @RobynCurnowCNN Big shoes to fill!”

— Robyn Curnow (@RobynCurnowCNN) May 1, 2015