SONA2017: Parliament releases accredited media list

With the 2017 State of the Nation Address approaching, parliament has released the list of accredited media to cover the event (which you can find in its entirety here.) The list provides a sort of indication as to what kind of coverage we can expect from broadcasters, both television and radio. Here are some observations:

SABC
The SABC will once again have the largest presence on the ground for the State of the Nation Address, with a whopping 196 personnel accredited to cover the event for both their tv and radio platforms (and in different languages as well). As always, one can expect a high quality all round broadcast from the SABC, but hopefully not like last year where they decided to provide excess coverage to fluff like the red carpet and not address the bigger issues present.

Strangely, prime time news anchor [English], Peter Ndoro, is not listed as accredited media, but is expected to anchor the traditional post-SONA The New Age Breakfast Briefing. Another big name not on the list is Chriselda Lewis.

Morning Live anchor, Leanne Manas, and prime time business anchor, Francis Herd, are the only anchors of high viewer timeslots that are accredited.
Accredited reporters include Vanessa Poonah (who has in the past provided excellent coverage of protests at parliament) and Krivani Pillay among an army of reporters.

eNCA
 eNCA will have a team of 96 personnel on the ground at the parliamentary precinct.
This will be eNCA's first State of theNation Address since they gutted their Cape Town operations, so traditional big names for Cape Town based coverage like Amy McIver and Andrew Barnes will no longer feature.
As always, News Night anchor, Iman Rappetti, will be there, Jeremy Maggs won't.

Reporters for the channel include Percival Young, Thulasizwe Simelane, Athi Mtongana, Annika Larsen, Lester Kiewit and basically all Cape Town-based reporters, including even the lifestyle reporter, Tanya Nefdt, among others
Another big name excluded is Justice Malala, who usually provides commentary. Longtime SONA commentator, Judith February, will be there.

ANN7
Though ANN7's team of 29 will be the smallest of the three big news broadcasters, they are sending all their big names to Cape Town.
This will be prime time anchor, Sindy Mabe's first time anchoring SONA coverage. Prime time business anchor, Clive Ramathibela Smith, is also listed. As Clive's expertise is not only used by ANN7 (he regularly appears on CNBC Africa and radio as well), it is a sort of coup for ANN7 to secure his services for the big night. Cape Town based reporter, Chelsea Lotz, will be working the event as well. Senior reporter, Keldon Ongmu, will also be providing coverage and analysis.

Other
CNBC Africa will once again have no one on the ground for the SONA address. This doesn't mean they do not cover the event. Instead, they opt to carry it live with a large in studio panel based in Johannesburg providing analysis.

Though five reporters have the 'Business Day' designation, no one carries the BDTV designation.

International broadcasters that will be there include Al Jazeera [international], ARD [Germany], the BBC (who has a rather large group of people accredited), Bloomberg [International], CCTV News [China], France24 [France], NHK [Japan], Sky News [UK] and all major news agencies.

Religious broadcasters
As has become the norm already, religious broadcasters with their own news divisions will once again be providing coverage of the Address. Islam TV (DStv 347), Loveworld News (free to air satellite, available online), Radio 786, Radio Islam, Radio Tygerberg and The Voice of the Cape are all religious broadcasters that will have an on the ground presence for the speech. Some of them actually will have more feet on the ground than big news organisations like News24.

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President Zuma delivers the State of the Nation Address on Thursday, 9 February.

SABC shifts news bulletin on SABC2 yet again

Another AFCON tournament means yet another schedule shuffle for the SABC's free to air channels, affecting the domestic langauge news bulletins, again.

The Afrikaans news bulletin, which has slowly been rebuilding its audience in the 7:30pm slot for the past few months now moves an hour earlier to 6:30pm, competing directly with SABC3's English news bulletin and etv's eNews Direct for audience share. The drop in viewers expected for the Afrikaans news bulletin won't be too bad as its lead-in, 7de Laan, now moves to the 6pm slot (which in itself is a slot on SABC2 that has struggled terribly in the past no matter what gets placed there).

The Sotho news bulletin, which was brought earlier a while ago due to viewer complaints about waiting too long for the news, now goes back to a later timeslot, 8pm, where it will compete with ratings giant, Generations, on SABC1.

These changes come into effect from Monday, 6 February after the conclusion of the AFCON tournament.

Vabakshnee Chetysigning off from SABC News for the last time

Co anchor of the SABCs flagship English news bulletin, Vbakshnee Chetty, has announced that she will be signing off from the SABC for the last time tomorrow evening, Friday, 21 January 2017.


This as she plans to emigrate with her husband, who got a job opportunity, to Chicago. At this time, she ha nothing lined up for herself on the other side of the pond, instead focussing on adjusting to the new setting and taking care of her young baby.

Vabakshnee has been anchoring Prime Time News, technically since its inception in 2013 when the SABC News Channel launched. She had conanchored the bulletin in its prior form as a one hour news bulletin on SABC3. Chetty leaving also marks the first time since March last year that a South African news channel's prime time lineup changes.

Chetty has been with the SABC since the start of her career fifteen years ago, filling various roles through the years. In addition to anchoring on SABC TV, she is also an anchor on the SABC's SAFM radio station.

Since announcing her departure, she has been retweeting farewell messages from colleagues and friends. SABC reporter, Thabiso Sithole tweeted, "Ja neh, not cool. So @vabakshnee, which one are you making your cameo on first? Chicago PD, Chicago Fire or Chicago MED. You Love TV moss.."

It is unclear who will fill her seat on Prime Time News going forward, but it is expected that Francis Herd will sit alongside her coanchor, Peter Ndoro in the interim. Herd filled her seat last year when Chettywas on maternity leave.

RATINGS: December 2016 Highlights

Below are the free to air news highlights from the free to air channels:

• Zulu news (SABC1, 7pm)3.94 million
• Xhosa news (SABC1, 7pm) 3.51 million
• eNews Direct Headlines (etv , 6pm Sunday) 2.25 million viewers
• Afrikaans news (SABC2, 7:30pm) 1.31 million viewers
• English News (SABC3, 6:30pm) 672 000

• Actuality show, Speak Out, continues to do well for SABC2, attracting an impressive 3.15 million viewers. Though the show usually does well, its success this month seemed to come down to its lead in, Muvhango, having an absolutely impressive run in December, peaking at over 6 million viewers. 
• A documentary based on the life of the late Cuban leader, Fidel Castro, did quite well on SABC1, pulling 2.82 million viewers.
• When Duty Calls, the actality show on SABC2 that focuses on crime, is doing well in the late 10pm slot, netting 1.28 million vierws.

• An airing of  the movie, Mandela: Long Walk To Freedom, did quite well on etv, pulling 2.13 million viewers. Though it is not etv's highest rated movie for the month (which attracted an additional 300 000 viewers), the viewership, which is an average based on the entire runtime of the movie, is impressive based on the film'd long run time of three hours. 

For previous posts, use the Ratings label below

The risk of taking a large scale holiday break

Watching CNBC Africa over the festive season was an interesting experience: there was absolutely no 'Africa' to be seen. Instead, viewers were treated to a near clean feed of CNBC's US feed, and occasionally its European one too.

Hour upon hour of uninterrupted US market news for days on end. It was as if CNBC Africa's operations came to a complete stand still. Problem is, while everyone in the CNBC Africa office was on vacation and just allowed the channel to play a foreign feed, African business news was still breaking and African markets were still trading.

So what do viewers do when their usual African business news channel is not broadcasting African business news? They look elsewhere. And once the staff of CNBC Africa decides to come back to the office on the 9th, will viewers return with them? Highly unlikely in the case of the viewer who found what they were looking for from a more consistently reliable source.

This poses a threat to CNBC Africa, a channel that has in 2016 registered a 0% audience share more than once. What happens when the ratings information comes in and the foreign business news performs better than what the expensive to produce domestic news does?

Another thing to factor in is a small but vocal part of the audience that have been regularly calling for a CNBC feed that does not include any African content.

Case in point: Supersport Blitz Live. In 2013, Supersport's news channel decided to launch a live sports news bulletin the way a traditional news bulletin is done with an in studio anchor duo instead of just the channel's traditional voice over format. The show went on what was said to be a holiday break, a holiday break that never ended as Supersport found it cheaper to go without and give viewers what they wanted, the channel's standard format.

It is one thing to do what all the other news channels do: mostly secondary anchors with a lot of taped shows, but a totally different thing to virtually take the news channel off the air completely for weeks on end.

Abigail Visagie next ANN7 anchor to enter another channel's "Presenter Search"

ANN7's lunch time anchor, Abigail Visagie, is the channel's next anchor that will be taking time off to participate in a presenter search competition from another broadcaster, E!.


The talent search show, hosted by Andile Ncube and judged by Terry Pheto, is not much of a 'presenter search' at all. Instead, it yet again takes established domestic tv personalities and treats them as if they are new to an industry where they have worked in, all in the name of maybe getting noticed by a foreign broadcaster.

 [This and the TLC Presenter Search makes the whole local industry seem cheap the way big South African celebrities are willing to do anything for a small role on a tv channel owned by a foreign broadcaster, even though the show they will be presenting is going to be seen by a much smaller audience than they used to and not seen abroad at all]

Other local celebrities that will be making themselves look cheap on the show include Mosa Kaiser (actor), Katleho Sinivasan (who is a presenter on the country's biggest channel, SABC1, but would rather be on a small foreign-owned channel like E!), Danine Naidoo and Ayanda Nhlapo (who were presenters on [ED] before DStv pulled the plug on that channel), Sian Moses and others.

Prior to Visagie, ANN7 anchor Lauren Jenae was a contestant on BET's Top Actor reality show. Though Visagie is a decent anchor, her and other anchors that use ANN7 as a platform to become a 'mainstream celebritiy' instead of a platform to get to a bigger journalistic platform are really hurting the channel as it attempts to build a reputation in the domestic news industry.

It is unclear whether Visagie will continue to anchor on ANN7 while the show airs (I have reached out to the channel).