SABC Financial Results Highlights

The SABC today released their annual financial statements. Here are a few of the major highlights:

• For the first time in history, the SABCS audience share is now below 50% (though 49% is not much lower). This is a result of increasingly competitive competition as viewers are continuing to subscribe to pay television providers or opt for free services like Openview HD.
• The SABC is continuing to grow healthily in the digital space (My only worry is that they are not monetising their growth in this space enough).
• The public broadcaster posted a net loss of R441 million for the financial period. The loss was attributed to poor performance from certain revenue streams, poor economic conditions, having to broadcast major events (which are costly to produce) and cut backs by advertisers.
• All of the SABC's radio stations are comfortably meeting the audience share quotas set for them by ICASA.
• When digital terrestrial television finally launches, it will launch will closed captioning (in South Africa called "subtitles") for a large portion of the SABC's content.
• The SABC spent R573 million on sports rights
• The SABC allocated R19.7 million worth of advertisements for Public Service Announcements, though no single campaign was allocated more than R1 million. 
• The SABC recognised R1.7 billion worth of imparment of programming. This is most likely due to the scrapping of a large amount of foreign content when the local content quotas it imposed on itself were increased. 

SABC News Highlights

• The average weekly viewership of viewers aged 15+ stands at 1 050 711, making it the least watched of the SABC's 5 channels. For comparison, the SABC's other DStv-exclusive channel, SABC Encore, averaged slightly more than 1.4 million viewers in the same demographic. (Another interesting thing I found was that SABC2's footprint, contrary to popular belief, is actually larger than SABC1's.)
• The audience share of all local language bulletins increased for the period. 
• The only complaint that SABC News received that was upheld and they had to apologise for was that a presenter referred to Native Americans as 'red Indians.' Seriously. 
• What does the SABC pay for its news productions? R876 million. The division is not profitable. All other local news channels are profitable, but they do not have as extensive coverage as the SABC

You can read the financial statements in full at:  http://www.sabc.co.za/wps/portal/SABC/SABCDOCSREPORTS

CNBC Africa launches on Star Times Nigeria

CNBC Africa today announced that they will be launching on Nigeria's second largest pay-tv provider (and second largest on the continent), Star Times. This allows the largest business news network on the continent to be seen by potentially an additional 3 million viewers.


Head of Public Relations at StarTimes Nigeria, Israel Bolaji, noted that, “As a business, this addition means an exciting scale-up on our life enriching news channel options for esteemed subscribers and reinforces StarTimes’ stature as the fastest growing Pay TV network operator in Africa.”

Executive Director for ABN Group (the company the operates the CNBC Africa and Forbes Africa brands), Sid Wahi, stated that “CNBC Africa has had the best Pan African business content for well over 9 years now. Getting onto additional terrestrial platforms like StarTimes paves the way for us to reach new audiences in new markets.”    

Prior to being exclusively available on DStv, CNBC Africa was available freely on Sentech's Vivid platform (the precursor to Freevison). The channel's stream is still available without restriction at its website. 

CNN to publish first book ever

CNN this past week that the news broadcaster will do something for the first time in its over thirty years of existence: Publish a book. About what topic? The US elections, of course, appropriately titled, 'Unprecedented.'

The book will be written by Thomas Lake, who is a writer for CNN Politics. The book's forward will be written by Jake Tapper, host of CNN's State of the Union (Sundays 4pm CAT) and will feature an introduction written by historian Douglas Brinkley.

The book will features stories from the campaign trail and behind the scenes stories from CNN's large amount of campaign trail reporters and producers.

As seen above, the book has one of two possible covers depending on who wins the election (Wonder what would happen if a third party candidate won?).

The book will be released December 6th, nearly a month after election day on November 8th. (Could someone please put it in my Christmas stocking?)

Comedy Central adds local satirical news show to schedule

Comedy Central Africa (DStv 122) today announced the launch of Comedy Central News (CCN, to to be confused with CNN, or is it to be confused?), the channel's latest local project.

Comedy Central News will be a satirical news programme covering every possible hot topic from sports to pop culture, American politics and local news.

The programme is produced by the same company behind Starsat's critically acclaimed ZANews: Puppet Nation, Both Worlds. It will be anchored by comedian, Sne Dladla.

CCN is not South Africa's first satirical news show. There is the aforementioned ZANews, and then there was Late Night News with Loyiso Gola which ran for eight seasons on eNCA.

Comedy Central News will also not be the first Comedy Central News in the world. The brand (which includes the name and format) has been running in different European countries, like the Netherlands, for a while now.

CCN premieres on Comedy Central Africa (DStv 122) on October 3rd at 9pm, complementing the channel's main American satirical news programme, The Daily Show with Trevor Noah, which airs Tuesday through Friday at that same time.

Chante Jantjies leaves ANN7

Earlier this month, the once youngest news anchor on all of South African television, Chante Jantjies, left ANN7 (DStv 405).

Chante, who has been with ANN7 since inception, is a former Miss Teen Universe (and Miss Teen SA) and now has her sights set on the main pageant title, Miss SA.

Whilst at ANN7, the former (but again current) beauty queen has filled various roles [and it has been an absolute pleasure to watch her grow as a news anchor/reporter]. Her first structured anchoring slot was the weekday 9am-11am slot. At the start o 2015 she was moved to weekend breakfast as to better accomodate her studies, before more recently taking up the role of the lunch time anchor. In addition, late last year she added Newsroom Live to her schedule, a news bulletin that e.tv tried to duplicate with eNews Direct.

On Express Lunch and Newsroom Live, Abigail Visagie takes over anchoring duties, which leaves Peter van Onselen as solo anchor of Vuka Africa once again. Abigail is now also the last of the anchors ANN7 hired and trained at inception that still has a weekday slot and is sill with the channel.

Times Media Television launches SME Zone

Times Media today officially announced the launch of its fourth television channel, SME Zone.

SME Zone joins Times Media's other channels on the DStv platform, Business Day TV, The Home Channel and Ignition.

The channel, which aims to be a self-help platform for small business owners and those looking to start a business, will air on weekends on channel 412, the same channel number as Business Day TV (and also the same way Ignition started as a weekend block before being expanded to a full channel).

The SME Zone will feature step-by-step guides on how to identify, start and grow a successful business; educational modules such asThe Small Business MBA; real-life mentoring sessions with experts; and tips and inspiration from some of SA’s top entrepreneurs.

“Nine out of 10 small businesses fail within the first 3 years,” says Semeyi Zake, creator and executive producer of the SME Zone. “That’s a terrible waste of hope, energy and resources. We aim to give entrepreneurs a fighting chance, via clear templates and business models that will greatly increase their chances of success.”

Some of the shows in the SME Zone line-up include: Jumpstart (self-help jobs you can start with R500 or less); Biz Guide 101 (a blueprint for running 25 popular businesses); Pimp my Bizz (revamping a faltering enterprise); Pitch & Polish (a nationwide search for the best ideas); and SME Funding.

“We realized there’s a hunger for business knowledge beyond the markets and corporate deals. As a channel, we are passionate about small business, realizing that this is where we can make an impact in addressing the country’s skills gap and play our role in creating employment and growing this economy,” Zake adds.

Vernon Matzopoulos, Head of Broadcast at Times Media, said: “We’re looking to help grow the next generation of business, and TV is an incredibly powerful medium of instruction to drive that. Thanks to DStv’s generosity in making the airtime available, we can now reach into 5.5 million homes – and hopefully inspire a small business revolution.”

You can find out more about the channel at its dedicated site, http://www.businessdaytv.co.za/smezone/

RATINGS: August free to air news highlights

• The Xhosa news and Zulu news on SABC1 continues to lead the pack by far, averaging 4.53 million and 4.51 million viewers, respectively.
• On SABC2, consumer affairs show, Speak Out had a strong month once again, with its premiere episodes capping at 2.3 million viewers whilst its reruns finished a strong 2.1 million viewers. Yes, a rerun beat most of the rest of SABC2's lineup and all of SABC3's programming.
• The news bulletins on SABC2 seem to be recovering from their timeslot shifts with the Afrikaans news pulling a peak of 1.499 million viewers, with the multilingual bulletin (as always, there is absolutely no reason why three languages should be sharing one slot for news) not far behind with 1.47 million viewers.
• SABC3's English news bulletin pulled slightly more than 860 000 viewers for the month.
• The weekend editions of eNews Direct, well at least the one-minute bulletins that get the benefit of having a very strong WWE lead-in, averaged a very strong 2.5 million viewers for that single minute. The standard eNews Direct bulletin is yet to feature in the channel's top twenty programmes since its inception in January.
• A major point of concern is that in August 2016, a Municipal election took place here in South Africa (in case you forgot). The 30th most watched programme on DStv pulled 189 000 viewers. No South African news channel, therefore, was able to pull at least that amount of viewership for any moment on an election day, a day when people are usually expected to flock to news broadcasts. Also, no election coverage charted on either SABC2 or etv, both of which aired election programming. Are South Africans getting their news from other places or just ignoring major news stories completely?
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Ratings courtesy of brcsa.org.za. Programming included is for prime time only, which is defined in South Africa as the time from 5:30pm to 10:00pm. Ratings are for viewers fifteen and older only. 

ANN7 is profitable, and other highlights from Oakbay's results

Oakbay Investments, a major shareholder in Infinity Media (which in turn wholly owns ANN7), yesterday released their financial results for the year ended 29 February 2016. Below are highlights from the investment firm's media holdings' performance.

Firstly, and most notably when it comes to editorial policy, the media release states that, "the position of TNA (and by virtue, ANN7) is supportive of government, whilst remaining editorially independent and scrutinising of the ruling party." This must be the first time the organisation has publicly announced that they have that particular slant when it comes to covering government, even though it is basically open knowledge.

Later in the media release the following is stated (draw your own conclusions): "The pro-government stance and regional focus of TNA contrasts with the urban bias and Opposition-supporting focus of most other daily newspapers."

ANN7, which is the third most watched news channel on the DStv platform, boasts 2.3 million monthly viewers.

ANN7 and the New Age's Cadet Academy helps to develop the skills of approximately 40 young journalists a year, nothing wrong there. [Quite nice actually especially in an industry where it is hard to get a foot in the door]

Collectively, ANN7 and The New Age have created 783 jobs in the country.

Alo, they have contributed a combined R275.6 million in revenue to Oakbay's performance for the year, roughly 10% of the group's overall revenue.

Then there is the controversial topic of government's high ad spend on the two platforms. R78.53 million of ANN7's and The New Ages ad revenue is from government. In other words, roughly a quarter of their revenue came from government advertising. This is approximately 9% of government's total ad spend.

The future seems exciting for ANN7 as the channel plans to aggressively hire new talent to increase their presence from being in three provinces to being in six.

In addition, ANN7 is planning on launching a radio station based on the fact that radio is still extremely popular in the country.