Errol Barnett leaving CNN

CNN this past week announced that Europe, Middle East and Africa breakfast show host, Errol Barnett, is leaving the organisation.

Prior to hosting CNN Newsroom, Barnett was a correspondent based out of the channel's Johannesburg bureau and presented the magazine show Inside Africa.

Barnett leaves CNN to become a Washington-based correspondent at the American broadcast network, CBS, the same channel Debora Patta works at. On the move, Barnett said that he is 'moving from one dream job to another.'

No announcement has yet been named on who will take over from Barnett, who co anchors the 8am-10am (CAT) slot with Rosemary CHurch.

eNCA expands its online audio offering greatly

The country's most watched news channel, eNCA (DStv 403), continues to expand its ever growing online presence. This time, they have heavily grown their podcast offering beyond just the recently launched Moneyline podcasts.

eNCA Radio
The first in the series that was launched is eNCA Radio, which is very similar in structure to a news bulletin that broadcasts at the top and bottom of the hour on many radio stations. The newsreader on the podcast is eNCA's Deputy Online Editor, Lynne O'Connor, who prior to joining eNCA was a news anchor at radio news brand, Eyewitness News.
The approximately three and a half minute bulletin is also downloadable, with a size slightly less than a megabyte, perfect for on the go consumption.
eNCA Radio is uploaded weekday mornings.

Amabookabooka
Relatively long running podcast, Amabookabooka, now joins eNCA's podcast offering. Not much has changed now that it has made the jump from iTunes to eNCA, still focussing on books and their authors.

Judge for Yourself
Like the Moneyline podcasts, Judge for Yourself is just the audio version of the television show, with the commercial breaks removed.

All in all, it seems like eNCA is now a fully fledged competitor in the podcast environment. Lets see where it goes from here

Comedy Central shakes up late night satire block

Comedy Central (DStv 122) has made major changes to its  satirical news block that airs Tuesday through Friday from 23:30 CAT.

Firstly, The Tonight Show with Trevor Noah's late night airing is pushed back from 23:30 to 23:55.

Next, the daily airing of The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore has been axed completely, and is not replaced with the less traditional @Midnight hosted by Chris Hardwick.

Why they could not just air all three is anyone's guess. They are, after all, produced in house.

Arabile Gumede leaving eNCA for Bloomberg

eNCA's prime time business news anchor, Arabile Gumede, will be leaving the domestic news channel at the end of May.

Gumede joined eNCA from CNBC Africa in 2013 to fill the void left by Francis Herd who jumped ship to the then new SABC news Channel (DStv 404). He holds a BComm Accounting degree from the University of Johannesburg.

At eNCA, Gumede primarily anchored the business news segments on the prime time News Night (and by virtue, the business news segments on the second hour of Afternoon News). In 2014 he became the Friday anchor, and fill in anchor, of the channel's first daily dedicated business news programme, Moneyline. On days when major economic stories broke, like rate announcements, Gumede would provide live coverage from the reserve bank and also file reports that aired throughout the day on eNCA and etv's news bulletins.

Since joining eNCA, Gumede has built up quite the following on social networks, providing financial news and advice to his over 12 000 Twitter followers, including his savings plan at the beginning of the year where you start by saving R10 a week then increasing from there (or the other way round), something that gained quite a bit of traction of the social network. In fact, Gumede has something most in tv news do not: naturally fitting in on the 'cool' Twitter where younger, more trendy people are in his social circle, something newsers by default have a hard time reaching.

He is taking a big gamble by jumping to Bloomberg. In 2013, Eleni Giokos too made the jump from eNCA to Bloomberg (under its then new division, Bloomberg TV Africa). However, not too long after that, the entire division was shut and Eleni found herself freelancing in South Africa before being picked up by CNN last year.

A replacement for Gumede has not been announced yet. He leaves behind Siki Mgabadeli who is eNCA's Senior Business Anchor (though she is not really seen that much outside of Moneyline).

Gumede leaves eNCA at the end of May.

Ratings updates: News channels for April

Courtesy once again of Patrick Conroy's Twitter account, here are the viewership share for the news channels broadcasting on the DStv platform.

Just a few observations:

• It seems as if the competition between UK news channel, Sky News, and South African news channel, ANN7, for third place is over now, with Sky solidly in third place. However, ANN7 is up decently from the prior month. 
• Month on month, BBC World News' audience share plummeted by 40%, which is rather sharp.
• The wall to wall American election coverage is paying off greatly for CNN, pulling ahead of the other two international news channels, BBC World News and Al Jazeera decently.

As always, when it comes to analysing these figures, it reflects the slice of the pie and not the size of the pie itself. 

CNNi adding new daily American politics show to its schedule

CNNi (DStv 401) today announced that the channel will be adding a new American politics news show to its schedule.

The show, to be anchored by Congressional correspondent, Kate Bolduan, will be called 'State of the race' and will air daily at 8:30pm CAT on CNNi. It will broadcast from New York.

“This has already been a race like no other, and it is clear there is a lot more to come,” said Bolduan. “Every night we’re going to bring our international audiences along for the ride – offering the very latest developments from the campaign trail and giving them the inside scoop of what is really going on within the campaigns and in the minds of American vote

'State of the Race' joins the channels now growing coverage on the race to the white house, which includes the daily 'Wolf' (7pm CAT) and the weekly Political Mann (various air times).

The channel has not said what will happen to Zain Asher, who previously anchored the timeslot.

Sunday Times reports Multichoice is ready to drop ANN7

The Sunday Times this past week reported that Multichoice is planning on cutting domestic news channel ANN7.

According to the Times, the reasons for the apparent cut include viewer complaints, failing to communicate changes to their schedule, not sticking to their schedule and poor quality broadcasting.

The reason of them not sticking to their schedule is rather silly. It is a NEWS channel. They are expected to provide rolling coverage of breaking news. Due to the increased amount of live events and breaking news occurring in recent months, the channel has even streamlined their schedule, cutting the 5:30pm entertainment news slot and the late night GameOn! broadcast. The only non traditional news program on the schedule that can be preempted, GameOn! at 6:30pm, is at a rather odd time in case of breaking news but anyone that watches a foreign channel like CNN knows how badly their rigid schedule is preempted for breaking news so it should be expected that South African channels should be allowed the same freedom.

The axe is alleged to swing over the Midrand-based channel in August, when their 3 year contract with Multichoice is up for renewal.

Due to the nature of the South African pay tv market, when Multichoice axes you, you close your doors for good as there is no other platform capable of supporting a capital intensive operation like a news channel on their own.

Multichoice earlier today replied to the Sunday Times'  report, stating that the claims made by the paper are untrue and incorrect.

eNCA launches Moneyline podcasts

In what is a first for a South African news channel, eNCA (DStv 401) has launched a daily podcast of their Moneyline bulletin.

The  Moneyline podcasts, which are freely available for streaming on their site, are essentially the daily Moneyline broadcasts, which premieres weekdays at 8:30pm on the channel, with the commercial breaks removed, so you can listen to the show in twenty two minutes as opposed to watching it in 30.

Unlike most podcasts, like those on CliffCentral, the Moneyline podcasts are interestingly not available for download and later consumption, so a live internet connection would always be needed.

The launch of the Moneyline podcast follows just a few months after eNCA launched eNews Direct on etv and made those news bulletins available in full and for free on their Yourtube channel.

http://www.enca.com/money/listen-moneyline-podcasts

Richard Quest in South Africa for INDABA2016

Courtesty :@AbeikuSantana (Twitter)

In case you have been watching Quest means Business (CNNi, 10pm, DStv 401) and wondering where regular anchor, Richard Quest, has been all week, well, he is here in SOuth Africa, attending the Tourism Indaba taking place in the country.

Today, May 7th, he moderated a panel at the Indaba, which was also carried live on eNCA (DStv 403).

On his experience in the country, he tweeted about how he was enjoying the experience and that he felt 'totally safe' in the country. Quest is actually a frequent traveler (wow the word has one 'l') to SA.

The domestic news channels are covering the Indaba with reporters on the ground, including Jody Jacobs for eNCA.

SA Decides is back on ANN7's schedule

Now that all the major political parties have held their election manifestos, ANN7 will be kicking its political news coverage into overdrive (as if it has not been there already).

Today (May 2nd) political news show, SA Decides is back on the channel's schedule daily at both 10am and 5pm.

The political news show premiered back in the 2014 election cycle, and featured nine teams crisscrossing the country's provinces to get an on the ground feel of the South African electorate. One thing that wont be back when the show returns is the anchor of the first season, Nzinga Qunta, who has since left the channel.

This time around, the channel is deploying eleven teams of 'media professionals' (55 individuals in total) across the country to cover the local elections. Most of these individuals will be young and aspiring journalists looking for an opportunity to get their foot in the door.

“The teams will travel the length and breadth of the country to reflect on ordinary people’s challenges and enable community engagements in order to provide a platform for ordinary people to tell stories about their own developments, hopes and aspirations,” the Channel’s News Editor Abhinav Sahay said.

In addition, the channel promises interviews with political heavyweights daily and in depth analysis on the issues shaping this election.