Robyn Smith Leaves eNCA/etv

Long time anchor at eNCA, Robyn Smith, signed off for the last time today.

"And after fifteen years at etv, the time has now come for me to say goodbye. It has been an absolute pleasure and honour for me to bring you the news. Until we meet again, take care." Those were the words she used to sign off from today's edition of eNews Direct on etv.

During Smith's time at the channel, she anchored various time slots. In 2008 when the then eNews Channel launched, Robyn Smith was paired up with longtime anchor, Andrew Barnes, to anchor the channel's lunch time bulletin, News Day. At the start of 2011, she left News Day with Scheherazade Safla taking over from her.

Since then, Smith has been anchoring the news bulletins on the free-to-air etv which originated from Cape Town. These were the weekend and holiday edition of eNews Prime Time and the weekday editions on eNews Late Edition. However, since eNews late Edition was cancelled at the start of last year because the demand for another soap slot was greater than the demand for more news, Smith was seen primarily on weekends. She was also a deputy assignments editor at the news organisation.

Smith has said that she will soon reveal what is next for her. Stay tuned.

[In case you want to watch Smith's last news bulletin in full, eNews Direct is uploaded onto Youtube daily]

Another full week of Eleni Giokos anchoring this week

Eleni Giokos will once again be filling in for an anchor on a CNN business news show this week.

This time it will be CNNMoney with Maggie Lake (though Eleni Giokos, even though Maggie Lake's name is in the show's name). Whilst Quest Means Business' broadcast time is at the end of the US business day, CNNMoney airs at the start, so it is kind of a change of gear for Giokos since the last time anchoring.

Eleni's odd tour of CNN's US bureaux continues this week. Three weeks ago she filled in for Richard Quest on Quest Means Business and then flew down to Atlanta (where the version of CNN we receive in South Africa originates from) to meet up with the Marketplace Africa team, a show she regularly contributes to but never gets to see the people that put it together on the other side of the world.

CNNMoney with Maggie Lake airs daily at 3pm CAT on DStv 401.

Kyknet tweaks late night actuality block

Kyknet has announced that its late night block of news and actuality content will be tweaked, once again.

Insig (Insight), its weekly news debate and interview show hosted by Waldimar Pelser has effectively been cancelled.

Instead, Waldimar will now host an extended Wednesday edition of Kyknet Verslag, which will be called 'Kyknet Verslag in gesprek' (Kyknet report in discussion). This means that Kyknet Verslag's usual anchors of Bettie Kemp and Riaan Cruywagen will anchor the show's Monday, Tuesday and Thursday editions only.

Entertainment news and chat show, Prontuit, moves to Insig's timeslot of Mondays at 10pm whilst Winslyn and Flits remain unchanged.

The changes to Kyknet's late night lineup kick in on April 1st, which is their usual 'season premiere' date.

[Personally I think this is just one bad scheduling decision after another. Kyknet runs three channels yet they feel the need to squeeze the DStv Premium and Extra-only main channel with so much original content that you have live actuality programming running until after 10pm just so that they can fit on the schedule, which as we can see by the constant changes is not gaining and audience. ]

'On the Record with Vuyo Mvoko' abruptly cancelled

Late last week the SABC News Channel abruptly cancelled their daily in depth news programme, On the Record with Vuyo Mvoko, after just under three months.


The City Press is reporting that the reason for the cancellation is that Mvoko, who is also a contributing editor at the SABC, planned to discuss the state capture by the Gupta family on the show. This then led to disagreements between Mvoko and the higher ups at the SABC which has now led to the cancellation of the show.

Mvoko also planned to interview  Deputy Finance Minister Mcebisi Jonas, who said he was offered the role of Fiance Minister by the Gupta family, on the show.

This move is just another that is bringing to light the SABC's apparent policy to not broadcast anything critical of the President or the ANC.

On the cancellation, Mvoko tweeted, "#OnTheRecord on #sabcnews tonight. #OTR_404 is no more. Thanks 4 support. Apologies for abrupt end." Since the tweet, many have expressed disappointment in the move, including the Public Protector, who tweeted the following in reply, "@PublicProtector Team is saddened by the news. We trust the canning of #OTR_404 is not due to improper motives."

The SABC News Channel schedule will go back to what it was before On The Record started, airing a three hour Your World from 9pm.

Vuzu shakes up presenter lineup

Vuzu yesterday (March 18th, 2016) announced that they have added three new presenters to their lineup. At the same time, the channel announced that Denise Zimba and Shelton Forbes will both be leaving the channel to 'pursue other interests.'

The three new faces on Vuzu are as follows:
Nomuzi Mabena
Earlier this year MTV announced a VJ search to replace Nomuzi, who has decided to pursue other things. What we now know is that those other things is a stint as part of the Vuzu family. Interestingly, Nomuzi, who is also a singer, departed from her record label earlier this week due to differences in their creative direction. [I find it strange that someone as established as Nomuzi would join Vuzu which has always been a platform for young up and coming talents.]

Dash
Member of hip hop trio, Dreamteam. Dreamteam also presented Friday's edition of V Entertainment as part of the programme's ongoing series of guest presenters on Fridays.

Shane Eagle
A former contestant on the channel's talent search show, The Hustle.

Interestingly, all of these new presenters are singers trying to make it in the industry, while now also reporting on the entertainment industry. You don't expect politicians to report on politics for obvious reasons so why Vuzu insists on having musicians report on the entertainment industry is weird.

The three new presenters join Lalla Hiriyama (who has been with the channel since inception) and DJ Speedsta (who has been with the channel since earlier this year). the five of them will split presenting and reporting for V Entertainment (Monday to Friday, 6pm on Vuzu and VuzuAMP) and V Prime (Monday to Friday 6:30pm to 9:30pm on VuzuAMO) between them.

Commenting on the decision to include more faces to the brand, Head of Reality and Entertainment at M-Net Local Entertainment Channels, Sphumelele Sibeko says “VUZU AMP is a young , innovative brand that is synonymous with all things fresh. We understand that we need to keep reinventing the brand through its people.”

The new lineup, known as the #Vuzu5, officially debuts on April 1st to coincide with the new season of V Entertainment.

The reaction to the new lineup has been largely negative, with many on social media complaining about viewer favourite, Denise Zimba, who has been a presenter since 2013, being cut. Since the announcement was made, Denise has been retweeting viewers' complaining about her being cut without directly mentioning it herself. Late last year Denise was cut from the soap Generations as well.

Ratings Notes: February News Broadcasts on Free To Air Channels

Just thought I would share a bit of viewership highlights for the month of February:

• With 4.1 million viewers, SABC1's 7pm Zulu news bulletin is the most watched news programme in all the land. 40.4% of all people watching tv at 7pm in February were wathcing this news bulletin.
  
• Not far behind it, the Xhosa news bulletin, which shares its slot, averaged 3.99 million viewers.
  
• The eNews Direct Headlines on Sundays are doing quite well on eTV with 2.4 million viewers. However, most of these viewers are viewers that remain watching the channel after WWE Raw ends as there is no commercial break between the two programmes and their viewership is nearly identical. the usual eNews Direct bulletin with Duduzile Ramela failed to make the list (The lowest programme on eTV's list averaged 1.6 million viewers).
  
• Afrikaans News (SABC2): 1.4 million viewers
  
• English News (SABC3): 831 000 viewers
  
• It is an absolute shame that African langauge news broadcasts are so marginalised in South Africa even though most people in the country speak it as a home language and actually prefer to watch the news in their home language. These numbers prove that fact. There are 3 24/7 news channels in the country. There are 2 business news channels in the country that are on air for most of the work week. There is a parliamentary channel and a weather channel yet all these channels are 100% English. Whoever capitalises on this untapped market will surely be rich. 

ACTUALITY PROGRAMMING

• When Duty Calls (SABC2): 1.2 million viewers [Impressive numbers considering its timeslot]
• Speak Out (SABC2): 2.69 million viewers
  
• Carte Blanche (MNet): 296 281 viewers (In case)

SPECIALS

• The MetroFM Music Awards had 3.8 million viewers watching this year with a 48% audience share. Like last year, all ten Trending Topics on Twitter were about the awards show that evening.
  
• The State of the Nation Address coverage on SABC 2 averaged 2.47 million viewers from 6pm to 9:30pm. Remember, the President's actual speech took place after 7pm when these numbers must have skyrocketed, which is evident by the amount of viewers that remained to watch 7de Laan once the channel's coverage ended (3.2 million people watched the 9:30pm episode of 7de Laan, well above the show's usual 1.5 million viewers usually)
  I would really want the budget speech to be shown in primetime as well considering that affects more people's live than the SONA speech (for tax purposes and for high school economics project purposes), but asking free to air channels to clear their highly profitable prime time schedule for two nights in quick succession is probably asking for much. 

Sindy Mabe starts early

Though Sindy Mabe's now well covered move to ANN7 was announced for this coming Monday, the anchor started early by anchoring most of the 3pm hour on the channel today.

What is traditionally a normal news bulletin anchored by Karabo Yibe, was instead a debate anchored by Mabe, identical to the type of debate she will be chairing come Monday when she takes over ANN7 Prime.

The hour was still branded on air as Newspoint, though.

The topic of the hour? None other than the Guptas' controversial ownership of ANN7 and its sister newpaper, The New Age, and a report the two entities released about the ANC apparently gtting ready to recall President Zuma. This is something Mabe will have to defend on a regular basis should the Guptas continue to stay in the spotlight.

Today alone, in defense of the Guptas, Mabe cited the positive influence the Guptas had on the country, which includes an amount invested in the economy apparently exceeding R10 billion and that over R200 million of taxes are generated by Gupta employment. The whole defense came across as awkward.

The whole hour was probably just a test hour for Mabe to get used to the setup and ANN7. I must say she is very good at what she does. It was not her being on tv that drew my attention but rather me wanting to see who this anchor is that is doing quite a good job on a channel that generally has bland anchors. ANN7 Prime is in good hands. But for how long? We'll see.

The interest generated by Mabe joining ANN7 in the media has been quite sizable considering how silent these things usually are for the channel. They seem to have a proper PR/marketing division now sending out releases on these kind of things while they even have a Twitter accoun dedicated to marketing the channel.

ANN7 announced that broadcast veteran, Sindy Mabe, will be joining the channel as the new anchor of their flagship news programme, ANN7 Prime.

She will be replacing Peter van Onselen, who vacates the position after just under three months. Prior to that, Sebenzile Nkambule held down the fort, and prior to that was a whole slew of different anchors and formats for a prime time news bulletin that just does not seem to find any consistency.

Sindy now joins a long list of former eTV personalities that have anchored ANN7 Prime: Chantal Rutter-Dros, Juliet Newell and Peter van Onselen all have eTV listed on their CV's before ANN7. At eTV, Sindy anchored the channel's breakfast show, Sunrise

Though this is not the first time the channel has turned to an outsider to anchor its prime time bulletin after its anchor left, it does highlight that ANN7 has not yet been able to groom an anchor in house for the position, especially considering how much they pride themselves on being the place where young journalists can get a start in the in
Sindy Mabe anchors ANN7's (DStv 405) Prime bulletin, which airs weekdays between 7pm and 9pm from this coming Monday, 21 March 2016. [Strange date, you never want a major event on a tv show happening on a public holiday when viewership is traditionally low]

PROGRAMMING ADVISORY: Eleni Giokos to anchor Quest Means Business this week

The excellent South African financial anchor/reporter, Eleni Giokos, will be filling in for Richard Quest on Quest Means Business this entire week.

'Questie' is on assignment this week, trying to fly around the world in 8 days using only budget airlines.

Throughout the day today, former colleagues of Eleni have been congratulating her and wishing her well, including Bronwyn Nielsen, who worked with her at CNBC Africa tweeting, "@EleniGiokos to host @questCNN live from New York this week. Fantastic for Eleni and Africa! Congrats - break a leg!" Also, Nikiwe Bikitsha, who worked with Eleni at eNCA tweeted her support, "Don't miss @EleniGiokos in for @richardquest on CNN all week at 11pm CAT live from New York. A proud moment for #Africa  #SouthAfrica."

This also means that CNN will have two South African anchors on air this week, with Robyn Curnow anchoring iDesk.

This fill in is definitely not coincidental. Something is definitely brewing behind the scenes as CNN usually has a whole hierarchy of fill ins for Quest, including anchors and reporters based in New York or the London studio. So flying someone across the world to do the show usually means there is a major meeting with management that the anchor has or that this is a screen test for something bigger. This follows the same pattern of Robyn Curnow flying to Atlanta to fill in for other anchors before receiving a weekday slot of her own.

Quest Means Business airs on CNN (DStv 401) weekdays at 11pm CAT.

Which news channel was the most watched for the month of February?

February was a busy month for South African news channels with both the State of the Nation Address and the Budget Speech taking place.

However, only eNCA saw an increase in audience share among South African news channels, keeping the channel at above 50%.

Interesting thing to note: Sky News is available in the least amount of homes of all news channels (only available in homes with DStv Extra and DStv Premium) yet is still able to hold on to a sizable audience share.

[As always, this graph is courtesy of Patrick Conroy's Twitter account. He tweeted that this was his leaving gift from his team at eNCA. He now heads OpenViewHD]

News Roundup

It is the start of the new month and I thought I would do a short roundup of industry news stories

Africa Magic Showcase Ends: The end of a very short, confusing era
When the Africa Magic channels relaunched and expanded their number a few years ago (to coincide with DStv Southern Africa moving to a new satellite) Africa Magic Entertainment was meant to be the brand's premium entertainment channel, showing only the latest and greatest African tv and film productions. The channel was also only available to DStv Premium subscribers.
However, the reception to the channel was not as exciting as M-Net (who packages the channel) thought it would be, with trouble experienced in both SA and in the rest of the continent  (there are two feeds of the channel).
Generations and Isidingo, two popular South African soaps that are [apparently] highly pirated in the rest of the continent, was added to the schedule. A few months later both were dropped due to disappointing viewership.
M-Net also experimented with a few original and first run shows, with some shows eventually re-airing on the other Africa Magic channels, while some, like Star Gist, didn't. However, not even this was enough to lift viewership with all shows eventually getting simulcast slots on other Africa Magic channels, taking away whatever premium value it had.
The channel's name was even changed from Africa Magic Entertainment to Showcase, but that also did not work.
As most of M-Net's quantity over quality channel expansions go, the experiment is now over with Africa Magic Showcase now ending its feed to Southern Africa.

Rhema gets replaced with 'TBN in Africa'
This past Sunday, Rhema TV  broadcast their last services as the channel gets ready to fold its original content in with 'TBN in Africa,' which launched this Friday.
If 'TBN in Africa' (as it is being referred to) sounds familiar to you, it should. Trinity Broadcasting Networks International licenced their brand and content to Andre Roebert's father back in the 80's to start TBN Africa which used to be broadcast on DStv. The relationship between TBNI and River Corporation (Roebert's company that ran TBN Africa) turned sour in 2014 when Roebert refused to send financial statements regarding a roof replacement at the East London facility (I kid you not) and Roebert decided to go solo, relaunching the channel as what we now know as Faith Broadcasting Network. (Viewers and people who donated to the organisation were told other weird stories about why the name change occurred but I suppose the tv industry has never been known for transparency).
TBNI wont be making that same mistake twice as they will be fully owning and controlling 'TBN in Africa' when it launches with Rhema's local programming folding into the network alongside an expanded slate of local content on what will now be a round the clock channel.
What will be interesting, though, is to see whther TBN pulls their last remaining programming from Faith Broadcating Network, which included the popular 700 Club.

FashionTV Replaced by Fashion One
I guess when DStv does cutting, they do it deep.
Fashion TV, which has been on DStv for years also got the axe. It will be replaced by Fashion One. StarSat also swapped the channels out a few years ago.
The good thing about this is that Fashion One actually features South African shows so being in many more homes will likely lead to an expanded slate o local content, in the same vein as BET and TLC did when they became available on DStv after being on StarSat exclusively.

Patrick Conroy starts at OpenViewHD today 
eNCA's head Patrick Conroy, finally makes the jump to head the group's satellite platform, OpenViewHD, today.

Supersport launches even more channels
Supersport has now launched Supersport 11 and 12 in the Rest of Africa. These channels are specifically packaged for the Compact bouquet in a country where Multichoice is facing increasing pressures to unbundle.
The content on these channels? English Premier League on Supersport 11 and La Liga on Supersport 12. Yes, these channels will basically be playing the same content from Supersport 3 and 5, respectively, but because Supersport for some reason don't want Compact subscribers in certain Rest of Africa countries to see the UEFA Champions League, which airs on 3 and 5, they used precious bandwidth to launch these new channels which are duplicates of 3 and 5 (except for Tuesday and Wednesday nights when Champions League is on). What will play on Supersport 11 and 12 on weekdays when there are Champions League matches? More EPL and La Liga repeats.