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
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