Ferial Haffajee joins Bloomberg

The City Press' editor, Ferial Haffajee today announced that she will be stepping down from that position, a position she has held since 2009.

She will be joining Bloomberg as a writer, who last month grabbed eNCA's business anchor, Arabile Gumede, as well.

"My seven years with the company have been a joy and a life highlight," Haffajee said in a statement. Prior to holding the position of editor-in-chief at City Press, she held that same position at The Mail and Guardian.

Haffajee will stay with City Press through to the end of June, before joining Bloomberg's now expanding Johannesburg bureau in the Spring.
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It seems as if history is repeating itself with Bloomberg, again. Remember in 2013 when they heavily beefed up the Bloomberg TV Africa division? Jounalists were stolen from everywhere and with much fanfare, even Eleni Giokos from eNCA decided to join the division. Fast forward to just over a year later and the entire division  was shuttered due to company-wide cuts that took place, leaving Giokos, among others, to do freelance work. And now, the business-centric news organisation is expanding again. For how long? Lets see.

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.

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

Jeremy Maggs Anchors News Night From Outside FNB Stadium

To commemorate five years since the start of the 2010 World Cup, eNCA's News Night was anchored by Jeremy Maggs live from outside FNB Stadium.

The channel's  coverage included interviews throughout the day, including with reporters like OJ Molefe, who is the channel's sports editor, and Kwesta, who performed at the closing ceremony.

A report by Arabile Gumede on the impact of the World Cup ran on the channel throughout the day and the channel invited viewers to share their World Cup memories with the hashtag #2010Memories.

eNCA's coverage of the anniversary did not focus as much as the other channels did on the bribery scandal that is playing itself out currently.

eNCA Tweaks Schedule: News Night Shortened, Money Line Earlier

eNCA, South Africa's most watched news channel, has tweaked its late prime time schedule.

Its long running 3 hour flagship broadcast, News Night, which is anchored by Iman Rappetti and Jeremy Maggs, loses its last half hour and is now only 2 and a half hours per evening.

Moneyline, the finance and business news show hosted by Siki Mgabadeli and Arabile Gumede now moves up half an hour to the 8:30pm slot with a general news bulletin now airing in its former 9pm slot.

The move sees eNCA finally breaking the full hour of non news content that aired in the 9pm hour (Moneyline followed by a magazine show), the longest period of time outside of late nights that the channel does not have any actual news on.

It also means that eNCA's late prime time and late night schedule is more simplified: news at the top of every hour, non news at the bottom.

News Channels Cover Mid Term Budget Speech

All South African news channels, with the exception of Business Day TV, carried Nhlanhla Nene's first Mid Term Budget Speech live.

eNCA had business anchor Arabile Gumede stationed in a studio at parliament from where he had a panel breaking down and analysing the budget speech while reporter Paula Chowles provided on the ground reaction from various oposition party members and also ANC members. Notably absent from coverage is senior anchor Andrew Barnes, who is based in Cape Town and usually anchors News Day during those hours. eNCA was the first channel to dip out of rolling cverage at 3:30pm, with analysis to follow during news bulletins throughout the rest of the day. Arabile is also slated to talk to the Minister of Finance during the 4pm hour.

ANN7 Mid Term Budget Panel

ANN7 had breakfast anchor Peter van Onselen co-anchoring with the new primetime business anchor from the Johannesburg studios with one analst in studio. Peter did most of the anchoring despite it being an anchoring duo. They provided mainly analysis of the budget and had the minimum amount of live on the ground coverage from parliament.

SABC News Mid Term Budget Panel

On SABC News, the lunchtime news team (which is a business-centric news bulletin in any case) provided live on the ground coverage from parliament in what I must say is the best studio at parliament: there is decent lighting, decent space and a decent view. They were joined by various in studio analysts and also had a few reporters on the ground getting reaction from MP's as they leave parliament (and look for reports as some of them appeared on all three news channels). Their coverage was also simulcast on SABC2.

CNBC Africa also hosted a budget panel from their studio in Johannesburg.

Siki Mgabadeli to Host New Daily Business Show on eNCA

Former CNBC Africa and SAfm anchor, Siki Mgabadeli is set to begin hosting a new daily business show to launch on eNCA (DStv 403, SKY 517), South Africa's most watched news channel, on October 1st 2014.

The show, airing at 9pm Monday to Friday for 30 minutes will be hosted by Siki from Monday to Thursday with current eNCA business anchor, Arabile Gumede (himself a former CNBC Africa personality) at the healm of the show on a Friday.

Along with hosting the new show, Siki now also takes on the role of senior business anchor, which is a snub to Gumede who has been with the channel since December 2013 doing business news as part of News Night.

Siki is, of course, no stranger to eNCA audiences. She anchored the channel's election day coverage earlier this year from 12pm-6pm, hosted the Big Debate that jumped from the SABC to eNCA, and also frequently appears on air as part of cross overs eNCA has with the radio station she is currently with, Power FM, during events like the State of the Nation Address or the Opening of Parliament.

The only problem I have with the new program is its timeslot. It airs 2.5 hurs after SABC News' business show with Francis Herd has ended, BDTV and CNBC Africa's decent primetime business schedule has begun to draw to a close and Tirrin Cossaway has done indepth business reports on ANN7 Prime.

But eNCA is doing their best to make sure that the new program will still be appointment viewing to the business audience. They are doing this by basically removing all the interviews and in depth analysis from Arabile Gumede's business news inserts on Afternoon News and Newsnight and adding them to this show to ensure that it is not old news to the eNCA audience. This will then lead to the problem that Gumede's inserts on Newsnight and Afternoon News will be very vanilla considering the channel now no longer want to give the big business news stories away in those slots, which is a mistake on the part of the channel.

The 9pm slot is als a slot that eNCA has traditionally avoided to program anything but general news bulletins in. The reason for this is that at 9:30pm the channel has shows like The Tech Report and Late Night News with Loyiso Gola, which is basically non-"real" news for 30 minutes before another general news bulletin at the top of the hour. Adding a daily business bulletin at 9pm means that viewers would have to wait a full hour before having another proper news bulletin on eNCA.

Not only does it mean a full hour without news on eNCA, but it also means that in the 9pm hour there would be no english South African news on, well, any South African news channel as SABC News runs stale non-live African language news in that hour and ANN7 has an old I Am South African in that hour.

Other than the timing of the new business bulletin, which is yet to receive an official name, this is an interesting move by a news channel that has generally avoided niche news bulletins.

ANN7's Hajra Omarjee Reporting Live From BRICS Summit

ANN7's Senior Political Correspondent (and host of Political Edge), Hajra Omarjee, is reporting live from Fortaleza, Brazil where the 6th BRICS Summit is taking place this week. She will be reporting live throughout the day as events unfold and also to provide commentary and will continue to do so throughout the three day summit.

President Jacob Zuma is, of course, attending the summit where the BRICS Development Bank is expected to be inaugurated at.

Though Hajra is a political correspondent, ANN7 does not have a business centric broadcast (but the news channel oddly has a daily sport and entertainment show that airs multiple times throughout the day), they are the only channel providing on the ground coverage of the event. Neither SABC News' prime time business anchor, Francis Herd (or any other anchor or correspondent), nor eNCA's Arabile Gumede are attending the event.

eNCA Experiment with 4pm "General News" Slot

eNCA seems to be doing some experimenting with its 4pm-6pm generic news bulletin anchored by Gareth Edwards.

What was initially through the years just a standard news anchor in seat reading the news bulletin is becoming increasingly a more interesting and exciting bulletin to watch now that Gareth Edwards anchors it. Gareth follows in the steps of the likes of current News Night anchor Iman Rappetti,current Morning News Todday and SA news legend Dan Moyane, Mid Morning presenter (and a former prime time anchor at SABC3) JoAnne Joseph and former prime time anchor Nikiwe Bikitsha in carrying the slot. By just looking at those names, one can see that the 4pm slot has historically been anchored by either people that have had great things happen in their career before taking the slot, or were promoted to greater things following their stint in the slot. It seems as if Gareth is destined for the latter.

(c) eNCA

But back on topic. Unlike the anchors before him, Gareth no longer just sits in the corner set reading the news, he actually walks across the whole studio, starting at the main desk, where he reads the headlines and previews what is to come, before moving to the larger screen behind him, all shown with more-dramatic-than-usual camera work.

(c) eNCA

Consistently throughout the two-hour bulletin he referred to the show as Afternoon News (On Twitter, #AfternoonNews), which is interesting because, other than the channels three 'main' news bulletins (Morning News Today, News Day and News Night), no other slot on the channel is referred to by a name, only labelled 'General News' on the DStv i-Plate and as eNCA by the anchors. Could the bulletin's name officially be renamed Afternoon News? We will wait and see.

One thing that has always stood out about the 4pm slot was its ability to attract guests to discuss stories, often guests of a high caliber. With all the changes taking place, this is the one part of the show that has stayed true to its legacy. Friday they had both Nickolaus Bauer ( who discussed the harrassment he went through at the hands of SAPS police officers at a rally. This story eventually crept its way to the top of the headlines later during prime time) and Toby Shapshack( who discussed a new patent of Apple's. Interestingly enough, he has a tech show on another channel, CNBC Africa, but appeared on a competitor instead).

The bulletin also had a business report in its last half hour presented by prime time business anchor Arabile Gumede, who has received a considerable amount of criticism since joining the channel.