eNCA moves News Day to Johannesburg

Starting this week, eNCA moved its long-running Cape Town based news bulletin, News Day, to Johannesburg.

This comes as the news channel continues to scale back its Cape Town operations in order to control costs. Just last week the channel laid off long-time Cape Town based anchor, Amy McIver, who co-anchored the news bulletin for the last few months. Others based in the Cape Town bureau have been told to either relocate to Johannesburg or be retrenched.

News Day, which is older than even the channel it broadcasts on, started airing on 4 October 2007 as Lunchtime Live based in Cape Town at a time when e.tv was still expanding news hours on the free to air a channel. Being based in Cape Town meant that the anchors could simply drive, or even walk, to parliament to cover events happening there.

Moving the bulletin to Johannesburg also means that not one of the three South African news channels have news bulletins originating from anywhere outside that city. The move also means that the handover from Cathy Mohlahlana to News Day will be much more smoother as breaking news in her slot often overran into News Day's slot, which required a long ad break to get the Cape Town anchors up.

It is unclear how the change affects News Day's actual anchor, Michelle Craig, who is currently on maternity leave. Would she move to Johannesburg to coanchor the bulletin with Shahan Ramkissoon, who is anchoring it solo now, or would she simply go back to being a weekend anchor.

Amy MacIver leaves eNCA/eTV

Amy MacIver announced that she would be leaving eNCA today, the same day she actually signs off for the last time. eTV, lacking taste, did not even mention beforehand that she was leaving, in contrast to the hero's send off Andrew Barnes received.

The reason for her leaving? She was retrenched from the organisation which continues to scale back its Cape Town operations.

The emotional Amy shed a tear at the bottom of the first half hour of News Day when she said goodbye to her eTV viewers for the last time (the first half hour of the lunchtime broadcast is simulcat on eTV). That is where she got her start with the organisation way back in 2005. When she joined eTV in 2005, there was no eNCA yet, just the news bulletins on eTV, back when eTV cared about news. She regularly did the Early Edition news bulletins (back when it was in English), the Late Edition news bulletin (back when eTV cared about news) and the weekend editions of eNews Prime Time (and subsequently eNews Direct Weekends), all of which originated from Cape Town.

Just last month she was temporarily promoted from weekend anchor to News Day anchor, filling in for Michelle Craig who is still on maternity leave. In 2015 she also produced and presented eNCA's magazine show, Earth Watch. Occasionally on big news events, like on election day, she would do reporting as well.

eNCA announces new anchors for News Day

eNCA this week announced that Amy McIver and Shahan Ramkissoon  will take over as anchors of the channel's lunchtime show, News Day.

They replace Andrew Barnes, who left the channel earlier this year, and Michelle Craig, who goes on maternity leave in September.

McIver has been the anchor of eTV's weekend bulletin for years now as that bulletin originates from Cape Town and has been the main fill-in anchor on News Day as well.

Shahan, who was previously a longtime reporter at the channel, left eNCA in 2014 to become the US-based correspondent for then new African news channel, Arise News. However, since that channel fell apart early this year, he has been freelancing at eNCA, mainly fill-in anchoring for their Johannesburg-based bulletins. He has slowly also been transitioning to reporting in a similar style as the now departed Yusuf Omar.

News Day airs on eNCA weekdays  from 1pm-4pm CAT.

eNews Direct Weekend Broacasts From the Weather Center

So this past weekend was the first weekend of eNews Direct Weekend being broadcast. Considering how the weekday counterpart uses a new, bigger studio as well as shots from the Johannesburg newsroom, it was going to be interesting to see how the weekend edition of the shoow, which is broadcast from Cape Town, would be done.

This past weekend was Amy McIver's turn to anchor and she did the bulletin entirely from a standing screen. The screen looked familiar to me and then I realised that it is the screen used to do the weather bulletins.

Yes, the news bulletin that aims to take you to the 'heart of the newsroom' is broadcast from the weather center.

 It was going to be interesting to see what the weekend edition looks like considering the setup at the Cape Town bureau is different to that of the Johannesburg one and is not exactly accomodating to the roving the newsroom format. [This is probably why the rumour that the weekend editions would also be done from Johannesburg studio started].

This format seemed awkward as well, it seemed more like just a normal news bulletin done standing up for no reason at all. There seemed to be little movement among the anchors and really just seemed like a low budget bulletin.


It reminded me of eNCA's News Night in the earlier years when the anchors would do the headlines from the big screen then move elsewhere for the rest of the bulletin.

On a side note, the eNews Early Edition branding has also finally been retired after all these years. The weekend edition previously survived when the weekday edition was replaced by the since then cancelled Sotho bulletin. However, it is now completely replaced by a short segment referred to as eNews Direct Headlines.