Liberty Radio Awards hghlights

South Africas premier radio awards show, the Liberty Radio Awards (formerly MTN Radio Awards), took place this past weekend. Here are some of the newsy highlights.

Radio 702 and Cape Talk's The Money Show won the award for best Business and Finance Show.

The award in the Field News Reporter category went to Kaya FM's Tunicia Phillips.

The winners in the best News and Actuality Show categories were Inanda FM's Izwe Nezalo (Campus and Community), Lotus FM's Walk the Talk (PBS) and Power FM's Power Update.

The winners for best Newsreader were Vow FM's Katleho Sekhotho (Campus), Hot 91.9 FM's Gladys Sithole, who was formerly a news anchor on ANN7, (Community), Nomsa Mdhluli from SAFM (PBS) and Tara Penny from EyeWitnessNews (Commercial).

Best Radio Documentary went to EyeWitnessNews' Through the Cracks - The Untold Story of Mbuyisa Makhubu.

Ms Cosmo from 5FM won in the category for Traffic Presenter.

Jeremy Maggs of eNCA (and Power FM) was entered into the Hall of Fame.

It was a good evening to be part of the Power FM family as the station won in the categories for Content Producer (Power Update - Neo Leeuw), Daytime show (Power Talk), Sports Show and Station Imaging as well.

To see the full list of winners, including who won Station of the Year, click HERE.

RATINGS: March2016 Free to air Highlights

Below are the peak viewership figures for South Africa's free toair news bulletins:

• Zulu News (SABC1, 7pm): 4.324million
• Xhisa News (SABC1, 7pm): 4.181 million
• eNews Direct Headlines (Sunday 6pm) 2.542 million 
•  Afrikaans News (SABC2, 6:30pm) 1.334 million
• Seswati, Setswana, Sepedi news (SABC2, 8pm) 1.215 million
• Venda, Tsonga News (SABC2, 5:30pm) 928 145
• English News (SABC3, 6pm) 756 753 

Actuality/Documentary  Highights:

• Speak Out (SABC2, Thursdays 9:30pm) 2.86 million 
•  Return of the White Lion (SABC3, Sunday 5:30pm) 715330
• Feast of the Predators (SABC3, Sunday 5:30pm) 662961
• Dolphin Army (SABC3, Sunday 5:30pm) 658813

(Remember that SABC3 and SABC2 tweaked their schedules at the start of the month)

eNews Izindaba cancelled

Though etv relaunched two of their free to air satellite channels this past week to much fanfare, not much noise was made about the cancellation of eNews Izindaba, which aired its last bulletin last Friday.


When eKasi+ made way for eExtra, the channel dropped most of its local content in favour of well-dated foreign content, which is going against the grain of what the rest of the industry is doing by increasing local output.

One of the shows that were cut was eNews Izindaba, the only South African-language news bulletin not produced by the SABC.

eNews Izindaba has seen many shifts over its short life span: It started on eKasi+ when that channel started at a time when etv still aired Sotho news in early prime time (and overall still had an appreciation for prime time news). Then etv decided that the Sotho news should be canceled as they decided to shake up their prime-time lineup to make way for a third soap, but moved the Zulu news bulletin over to etv as well which has a larger viewership footprint.

However, due to both the Zulu news bulletin and the moved English news doing badly in the ratings, the Zulu news was moved back to eKasi+ with both the channel and the news bulletin this past week getting canned.

Though producing a single news bulletin is not expensive considering the expensive news gathering operations are already covered by etv's broader news division, pumping out five episodes a week for the entire year does eventually lead to high costs, something which may not be justifiable based on the small footprint of OpenviewHD, coupled of course with the fact that there are no subscription fees to depend on.

Vuyo Mvoko joins eNCA

The highly talented and experienced former SABC News contributing editor today resurfaced on broadcast news, this time for eNCA.

Mvoko was let go by the SABC last July for speaking out against the news organisation's editorial policy.

With both Jeremy Maggs and Iman Rappetti leaving eNCA's News Night soon, the channel does not have anyone experienced enough in house to fill their roles. Could Mvoko, who previously hosted a prime time news programme on SABC News Channel be filling the void left by them soon?

His current role ateNCA is 'Specialist Reporter,' the same title Karyn Maughn holds.

Various news personalities took to Twitter to congratulate him on the move. Here are some:
Former eNCA host,Eusebius McKaiser:

SABC's loss is eNCA's gain: @vuyo_mvoko is now a specialist reporter for eNCA. Good to see you on television doing what you do best Vuyo. pic.twitter.com/4ePDLNp8j1

— Eusebius McKaiser (@Eusebius) April 4, 2017

Former ANN7 anchor, Asanda Magaqa:

@vuyo_mvoko NTINGA NTAKA NDINI!!! "They tried2bury us. Little did they know we were seeds" Yenza indima yakho njengo mntu onesiphiwo bhuti💝🙏 pic.twitter.com/KiEzGeQePH

— Asanda Magaqa (@asandamagaqa) April 4, 2017

Eyewitness News Senior Reporter:

Through its epic incompetence and mismanagement, the state has lost another expert to the private sector. Bravo, @vuyo_mvoko. https://t.co/SItdJaggLV

— Barry Bateman (@barrybateman) April 4, 2017

The news, uninterrupted

What happens when tremors are felt in studio whilst live on the air? Your conversation continues uninterrupted of course:

VIDEO: Tremor felt across SA ... and eNCA's studio pic.twitter.com/iwMncV75zW

— eNCA (@eNCA) April 3, 2017

But seriously though, talk about a cool reaction. Makes one sadder thatIman is leaving soon.