On Christmas 2014, CNN (DStv 401) had a mere 10 hours of live news on their schedule. When you thought it could not go any lower, it does indeed with them only having a mere 6 hours of live content on Christmas day this year (a quarter of a day), with the rest of the time filled with magazine shows, review shows and two airings of the CNN Heores awards in its entirety [Amount of hours measured using 24 hours in the US Eastern Time zone where the channel is head quartered].
Zain Asher, who has been on air this entire week worked extra hours in addition to her own and so did business anchor, Richard Quest, who did quite a few editions of CNN Newsroom. Quest, who has been on air every Christmas for the last few years (to allow those that celebrate the day to do so and to have a nice day filled with feel feel good stories) even has a Christmas tradition of his own whereby he cracks Christmas crackers on air with the behind the scenes personalities, seen below:
On eNCA, the Christmas schedule once again started an hour later, allowing the anchors to sleep in an extra hour, this year being Gareth Edwards who got to do breakfast show duty this year. Gareth had been anchoring News Night in place for Jeremy Maggs and Iman Rappetti who deserve the award for easiest schedule in news considering Gareth fills in for both of them most Fridays and now the whole festive week. Thulasizwe Simelane stood in for Cathy Mohlahlana and Joanne Josephs from 9am onward. Florence Letoaba did News Night
ANN7 had weekend Vuka Africa anchor Liezle Wilson anchoring on Christmas and, as they did last year, broadcast a live Church sermon to commemorate the day. In prime time Chante Janjies anchored, which she really did not want to do, as she tweeted. She ended after ANN7 Prime and the channel just rebroadcast her same news bulletin for the rest of the evening.
Morning Live, which was broadcast on SABC News Channel only and not SABC 2 had some live crossings to usual newsreader Ayanda Allie Paine who was capturin the festive spirit from outside the studio whilst Vaylen Kirtley held things down in the studio. The channel, once again, had the most (live) news on Christmas.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
On Christmas Eve, both eNCA and CNNi broke with tradition and chose not to cover the Pope's Christmas Eve Mass at all, even though they had in previous years. This year, the broadcast also made the jump from SABC3 to SABC2, the public broadcaster's channel featuring the most festive content. ANN7 also broadcast a large portion of the event live, but did so using a broadband connection which obviously is not even close to being as good as a high quality satellite connection as SABC2 had.
No comments:
Post a Comment