IN PICTURES: 2016 Municipal Elections (Plus closing comments)

Mmusi Maimane talking to ANN7's Sindy mabe in what was a rather tough interview on Municipal Elections Night

ANN7's SA Decides team spent their last few days on the job pushing long hours to reach voters in every corner of the country

Iman Rappetti with Thulasizwe Similane and Justice Malala providing some build up to the first results in the 2016 Municipal Elections

eNCA's Newsroom on Election Day

Devan Murugan and Naatasha Thorp continued the SABC's rolling coverage of the 2016 Municipal Elections

eNCA had some reporters reporting via Skype. Enough of this now. I am so over cellphone reporting

CNBC Africa hosted quite an insightful election day panel focusing on the money matters

All the news channels carried President Jacob Zuma voting live

Strangely, the SABC had their most recognised and experienced anchors anchoring the breakfast show hours on election day. Leanne Manas and Peter Ndoro were on air from 5am on Election Day

Peter van Onselen was forced to anchor alone after his planned coanchor for the day, Chante Jantjies had to call in sick on what would be the biggest news day of the year

Uveka Rangappa taking a selfie with the eNCA studio crew on Election Day. As always, Uveka anchored extended hours by herself

Final thoughts:
Young talent. That is what stood out for me. Both ANN7 and SABC News were not afraid to let their young anchors carry the day. SABC news made a bold decision to have the experienced Leanne Manas and Peter Ndoro anchor in the morning as opposed to prime time. Even having the two of them together as opposed to splitting them up to have more hours covered was brave. However, the likes of Alicia Jali and the channel's other anchors that have only been on air since the channel launched in 2013 were more than capable to hold their own.

The same could be said for ANN7. However, ANN7 depended more on younger journalists in the field. The only young prominent anchor to make an election debut was Audrey Chimwanda, who hosted SA Decides. Even though Sindy Mabe is well known on the domestic broadcasst news scene, this was her first time anchoring extended coveerage as well (Prior to joining ANN7, Mabe hosted Sunrise on eTV but she never got to anchor election coverage as eTV opted for eNCA's feed on election day). It was odd having sports anchors Peter Stemmet and Edwin Kgaswe unexpectedly anchoring extended hours of election coverage though.

eNCA's coverage lacked the said youthful spirit. The only first time anchor on Election Day was Cathy Mohlahlana and even she has contributed greatly to previous elections as a reporter. Yes, I know that if it is not broken, do not fix it, but eNCA could really do with a breath of fresh (younger) air somehwere. They had the oldest anchor/analyst line up by far. Yes this led to the best production overall, but it lacked excitement.

In closing, an Election Day broadcast is a major project that channel's dont get to practice to perfection due to their rarity. Unlike in the US where channels get to do wall to wall coverage for debates and conventions and the likes, local news channels do not have that many opportunities to improve their rolling coverage skills. This led to on air mistakes by everyone. Everyone. But it was nice to watch and basically cheer them on. It was particularly nice on eNCA to actually run a story highlighting the channel's own mess ups.

LIVE BLOG:2016 Municipal election eve

Here we go:
-SABC News Channel is the first channel to broadcast from the IEC Election Results Center for a special 90 minute edition of their daily election programme. Chriselda Lewis is on hand to provide analysis.

-ANN7 is the next to start broadcasting from the center with Sindy Mabe and Audrey Chimwanda from SA Decides coanchoring, preempting the channel's regular prime time schedule. The channel is already going with just using the SA Decides graphics. Who ever set up the channel's live spot is silly: there is just a banner behind the anchors without viewers getting a sense of what it is like to be in the results center.
Siki Mgabadeli is anchoring News night from eNCA's studio whilst Jeremy Maggs is holding the fort at the Results Center.
-eNCA and ANN7 are carrying the IEC's press conference live, SABC News talking about selfies.
-Blain Herman and Francis Herd are anchoring the main English news bulletin on SABC3 and SABC News Channel with sports anchor, Kendal Makgamathe, doing the news headlines at the tops and botttoms of hours.
-eTV has nothing special going on with their regular news show, eNews Direct, with Dudu Ramela in studio.
-[I LOVE the SABC News Channel's desk at the IEC Center]
- An anchoring swap on ANN7 with Edwin Kgaswe now sitting alongside Sindy Mabe who has a massive panel with them at the IEC Results Center.
- At 9pm ANN7 goes with Africa Tonight instead of continuing rolling coverage.

-At 9pm, SABC News Channel aired Your World from their Auckland Park studio though retaining a heavy electoral focus while anchors at the IEC Center did a few segments from there.
At 9pm, Florence Lotoaba took over coverage from eNCA's main studio.

Election day broadcast plans: eNCA

eNCA's election day coverage starts bright and early on election day at 5am (who really wants to wake up early on a public holiday?) with the Morning News Today team.

This will only be the start of what will eventually be 48 hours of live, non-stop rolling coverage of the election on the channel that calls itself "Your independent elections channel."

The channel's large team of reporters will be deployed to each and every province, with a major part of the channel's coverage originating from the main IEC Center in Pretoria.

eNCA will continue to use the same formula that they have used with the previous few elections: one anchor in studio and one anchor in the results center, with both of them working extended hours on air. In addition, News Days, which airs from Cape Town, will not be on air this election day.

In addition, the channel will feature exclusive political commentary and analysis from both in house commentators like Angelo Fick and Justice Malala as well as external analysts.

As the channel this year officially launched their own polling platform with Ipsos, they will also have statisticians and social media analysts on air

eNCA is available on DStv 403, and is streamed live on their website for viewers outside of South Africa. No word yet if the channel is planning to live stream the day in its entirety on Youtube as they had done in the past

Election day broadcast plans: ANN7

ANN7, along with the other domestic news channels, will be going with wall-to-wall election coverage.

On election day (August 3rd), the channel's entire broadcast day will be branded as 'SA Decides,' which is the name of the channel's running election programme.

As has been the focus of SA Decides, the channel's focus will continue to be on on the ground reporting, with the nine regioinal SA Decides teams all being deployed to each province's respective Regional Results Center.

In addition, the channel's main anchoring will be broadcast from their usual studio in Midrand as well as the main results center in Pretoria. Because South Africa still takes a while to count votes, the channel will continue coverage from this center for the rest of the week as well.

The channel will also be live overnight on Wednesday. The usual anchors will anchor extended hours with Sindy Mabe doing her first ever prime time election night coverage.

ANN7 is available on all DStv bouquets on channel 405, streamed live at ann7com

SABC launches local government elections show

[Forgive me for not posting about this sooner]

Along with shifting news bulletins around and new show launches, the 4th of July also saw the launch of the SABC's traditional election build up show.

'Election 2016,' as it is referred to, is a daily 30 minute election news roundup and daily topic analysis anchored by Morning Live's Leanne Manas, who is joined by Simphiwe Ncongwane. These two are joined on set by Thabiso Sithole who tends to do the in depth interviews. It airs from 6pm on both SABC2 (in the former slot of the multilingual news bulletin) and SABC News Channel (in place of the first half hour of Prime Time News). In addition, it repeats at midnight on both channels and is also uploaded onto SABC News' Youtube channel.

The show is broadcast live from the new studio that was launched for the rugby world cup last year. At the time, I said it may not be the best sports studio in the country (nothing comes close to what is done at Supersport), but it is by far the best studio among the news broadcasters.

The show also encourages viewer interaction by asking viewers to tweet a reply to their daily question using the hashtag #SABCElection2016.

The first segment of the show follows the format of a general news bulletin, but with an election focus, followed by an in depth piece and discussion about a specific topic in the second segment. This is then followed by a minute of members of the public answering a question about the elections. The final segment starts with an SABC Election tradition of giving a smaller party a minute to sell themselves to the public.

The show joins ANN7's SA Decides as so far the only two daily dedicated election news bulletins in the country.

Both eNCA and ANN7 launch election polls

eNCA

eNCA's poll will be launched with the help of research company, Ipsos.
eNCA's focus is on what they term the 'battleground cities' of Johannesburg, Port Elizabeth and Pretoria. The data is first checked for validity before it gets added to the cumulative results to provide an aggregate picture of what the voter sentiment in these three cities are like.
Instead of just asking voters which party they voting for, the polls are asking them other political questions as well. One question also asked if the voters will actually be voting, to which 15% said they would not be voting this year.
The results from the latest poll will be revealed tonight (Youth Day) at 6:30pm on News Night.

ANN7

ANN7 has been advertising the launch of their poll as the 'The poll pundits are back.' The channel is further stating that their polls were the only polls that got it right in 2014, even though they were the only channel running these kind of polls in 2014.
ANN7 is planning to broadcast their weekly poll projections every Friday night during SA Decides at 5pm and ANN7 Prime at 7pm.

All News Channels Carry Jacob Zuma Announcing His New Cabinet

As expected, ANN7, eNCA and SABC News all carried Jacob Zuma announcing his new cabinet live from Pretoria. For many of the reporters and anchors, there was no such thing as a weekend as many of them worked both the inauguration and tonight's coverage.

I must say I am not liking Jacob Zuma developing the disgusting habit of US President Barack Obama in his inablity to start a press conference/media event on time, expecting the whole country to patiently wait until he is ready to speak. All news channels informed viewers at 6:30 pm, the scheduled start time, that things were running late (something viewers could see for themselves), but could offer no further details. Nonetheless, things started a few minutes after that.

On eNCA, Cathy Mohlahlana anchored coverage from their Hyde Park Studio along with Nickolaus Bauer live on the scene. They carried absolutely no ad breaks for the duration of their build up while Cathy hosted an in studio panel from about 6pm.

SABC News carried the event live as well, but, ironically, the state-run news channel provided the poorest coverage of the event, with Peter Ndoro promptly starting the scheduled 7pm Prime Time Bulletin that is simulcast on SABC 3. The excellent Vuyo Mvoko did do a live report from the location, but was cut short due to time constraints.

On ANN7, Between the Lines Anchor Asanda Magaqa anchored along with Senior Political correspondent Hajra Omarjee. For Asanda it has been a particularly long day, having anchored her show live this morning at 9am, and then doing the coverage this evening. Hajra did a full, in depth analysis of the new show on her Prime Time show, Political Edge with a full panel, including a call-in from DA Spokesperson Mmusi Maimane and Sports Minister Fikile Mbalula.

Black Finance Minister 
One of the bigger newsbits coming out from the new cabinet is the new Finance Minister, Nhlanhla Nene, the first black Finance Minister in South Africa. This was mentioned on both ANN7 and eNCA. On ANN7, it was brought up as a first black Finance Minister, but within a few minutes Hajra Omarjee "corrected" the discussion, stating that Trevor Manuel was the first "black" Finance Minister (in a side note, Indian Pravin Gordon also qualifies as "black" in South Africa's racial classification, so this should have been a none issue). eNCA just mentioned Nene as the first Black "African" Finance Minister, avoiding any mistatements (though this can be contested as a coloured Trevor Manuel, it could be argued, is as African as Nene).

eNCA Inaugaration Plans

As Jacob Zuma prepares to be inaugurated as president for his second term, eNCA is preparing to bring viewers unrivalled coverage of the event.

Their coverage starts with live crossings from the start of the broadcast day, at 6am with coverage continuing in full earnest until 1pm, along with updates thereafter.

Anchors Gareth Edwards and Cathy Mohlahlana and Gareth Edwards will be stationed at the south lawns to give viewers a feel of exactly what approximately 20 000 ordinary South Africans would be experiencing. Senior Anchor Iman Rappetti will be stationed at the recently renamed Nelson Mandela Amphitheater, where all the action takes place.

As has become the tradition recently, the event will be live streamed in its entirety at enca.com

Review: All News Channels Cover "Opening Of Parliament" Live

As expected, ANN7, eNCA and SABC News all covered the opening of Parliament live, to varying degrees.

SABC News' coverage was done from  both their Auckland Park Studios as well as their studios in Cape Town, starting with Eben Jansen's edition of Newsroom and continuing throughout the day ith the bvarious programming, though they took regular breaks to cover other news, even airing some taped programming, which I think should have been preempted today.

eNCA covered the events at parliament during what was their regular news day. During Morning News Today, Justice Malala joined Uveka Rangappa to build up to the events. The channel also had Paula Chowles providing live reports from parliament. They have provided the least amount of coverage of the event, including allowing a sport report to continue just before 4pm when Justice Mogoeng started announcing the results, breaking in just as he announced Baleka Mbete had won the election to be the new speaker of parliament. They then carried her remarks along with the proceedings on who would be the new president. After 4pm, Gareth Edwards was joined by the stellar Angelo Fick to break down the proceedings as they happened.

Undoubtedly, once again, the star of the political coverage is ANN7. In their Midrand studios, workhorse Hajra Omarjee had been on air from about 10am providing political analysis as the events unfolded until the president was elected. She was joined by the usual anchors of the various slots, though she remained on air while the rest just stayed for their usual hours. They took a new, less traditional, approach to their in studio analysis where the anchors, who included the likes of Gladys Sithole and Nzinga Quntu, had a sort of casual conversation with Hajra about the proceedings. When there wasn't anything said, she provided well done commentary not talking to much or over anyone as commentary at live events tend to be. The only problem I had with them was that while all the other channels were carried a 'raw' feed of  the proceedings at parliament, they carried the feed from the parliamentary service (which is available about 3 channels up from them), which included their graphics and poor picture quality. If they really planning on being the place to go for politics, they should get the clean feed and not seem amateurish is basically playing another tv channel on theirs, seen below.

 

All three channels carried the proceedings live on their respective online platforms, ANN7 through their channels directr live feed at their official website, SABC News on their Youtube channel, eNCA on their website and Youtube channel, though they had technical difficulties that required everyone to refresh the feed. They were also plagued with other problems, including lack of sound. That's the number one news channel in the country for you.

Coverage continued on all three channels into the night.

All News Channel Plan Coverage of First Sitting of Parliament

As the antiscipation around the first sitting of Parliament draws nearer tomorrow, all news channels have revealded their intentions to cover the event live.
All three will cover the events live from 10:30am, along with the president speaking at about 2pm.
eNCA is planning inserts and live crossings throughout the morning.
ANN7 will have senior political reporter Hajra Omarjee reporting.
SABC News will be on location as they usually are from their parliamentary studio.

As usual, if you want to see the view from parliament uninterrupted, the best place to do so would be the Parliamentary Service on DStv channel 408 (Its a disgrace that this channel is not available on all satellite plaforms in the country), though their picture quality is known not to be up to standard.

Election Coverage Review: ANN7

The youngest news channel in the country, ANN7, has really gained popularity for what has been very in depth election coverage. One could argue hat building up to the elections, they had more coverage than both eNCA and SABC News.

The channel, who has mainly previously unknown on air talent (along with quite a few people that jumped ship from the likes of eNCA), has really put on excellent coverage from the crack of dawn, when usual breakfast anchor Peter van Onselen carried the hours 6am to 10am after doing prime time anchoring just the night before. Their coverage consisted of a decent mix of broadcasting from their studios in Midrand and the IEC Election Centre. They also mainly used the graphics package associated with one of their main election programs, SA Decides



From 10-12pm, the host of their daily elections program, SA Decides, took over from him in the studio. I really liked that they had her play a pivotal role throughout their coverage. They really shouldn't drop the ball on this.

I was however disappointed in the role played by editor in chief Moegsien Williams' role in the coverage. He was just a panelist during the 12-2pm slot. Gladys Sithole, the channel's weekend prime time anchor was up next, anchoring from 2pm-4pm
Senior Anchor Chantal Rutter Dros anchored from the IEC Election Centre from 6pm to 9pm where she had an exceptional panel with her, along with senior political Hajra Omarjeee anchored from their studio. Hajra had a particularly busy day: part anchor, part analyst and part reporter. She really has been one of the bigger stars of this election.

Amazing pic from Hajra Omarjee's Twitter

At 9pm when the votes closed, they brought the too large and distracting election graphics that have been used for Election Tracker back, for the first hour or so just flashing zeros.

Desmond Tutu voting live. While he had usually been covered as a prominent politician would when they voted, this time around only ANN7 covered him voting live.

Overall, I must say that their panelists that they had on during the day weren't all that bright, though some were quite good and they had too few of them on to the point that they had been on air for quite a few hours and after a while one can notice that they have screen fatigue. But they more than made up for this on their live shots and inserts(even though some were done using internet connections, which I am not too fond of), including showing all of the bigger politicans voting live. They were also the only channel to show Desmond Tutu voting live as the others were showing a largely uneventful news briefing from the IEC Centre. They had exceptional shots of the voting lines from their chopper and reallyu gave you a on the ground feel of the elections. At the end of the night, they had a sort of highlights package of the days events that was well produced considering the amount of content that had to be editied in that short period of time. It is really hard to think that the same channel that was so horrendous just a few months ago could produce election coverage of the calibre that they did.

They were also able to get guests of quite a high caliber on the channel, including Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe and even Police Commisioner Riah Phiyega to give an update of if there had been any incidents thus far. Her interview was quite a while.

Watching their coverage of the build up to and post elections has really made me question whether Ann7 might just be the place to go for politics in the South African media. They have gained great momentum during the elections coverage, it is now up to them to build on it. Them building on it is going to be a news junkies dream to follow.

Election Coverage Review: eNCA

Courtesy of Patrick Conroy's Twitter

Of all three news channels we have, eNCA undoubtedly had the least sensational coverage (not necessarily bad).

Uveka Rangappa, who anchored from 6am to 12pm on election day got to cover all the bigger politicians in the country  voting. Here, she is covering President Zuma voting from his hometown in Nkandla.

Whilst the other channels broadcast primarily from the IEC Election Centre (and in ANN7's case, a decent amount from the studion), eNCA decided to stick with their broadcast originating from their Hyde Park studios, away from the hustle and bustle that goes along with being able to broadcast from the IEC Centre. This was in contrast to the atmosphere created on the other channels.

Gareth Edwards at the big screen from which he did most of his presentations for an extended period of Election day. The screen was controlled by him using the two iPads seen on the desk in front of him.

They also went with the format of their previous election coverage of having the main studio anchor anchoring a WHOPPING SIX HOURS of coverage on end. This started off with Uveka Rangappa from 6am to 12pm, Siki Mgabadeli(see paragraph below) taking over from her until 6pm, Joanne Joseph taking us to midnight while the team of eNCA Africa Edition co-anchored the overnight hours on Wednesday evening until 6am when Uveka was back (Do not judge me for not knowing their names. Not even Joanne Jospehs knew their names as she just said at the top of the hour "the next team" takes over whereas prior to this every anchor would actually give the name of who would follow them). Gareth Edwards was at the touch screen for most of the day from about 6am until nearly six pm, spending most of his birthday providing live analysis on the numbers around the election

Siki Mgabadeli anchored the channel's afternoon coverage.

I am very disappointed that the channel had Siki Mgabadeli anchor six hours of the coverage, considering that she is not even an anchor at the channel. Elections are a time to showcase your best anchors and reporters so that the casual viewers who tune in for a big event like elections could potentially be enticed into tuning in again after the news fades. Instead of doing this, the channel decided to showcase the presenter of a seasonal one hour per week show, The Big Debate (which we can now almost certainly guarantee will be back for a new season ) for a full six hours. I also do not see how her presenting that show justifies her getting the slot ahead of the likes of young talent like Gareth Edwards, who had to play second fiddle to her, as she is primarily a business anchor, having had experiences at channels like CNBC Africa and Summit TV. Her first half an hour was not the best news reading, to say the least, the next half hour Gareth played a bigger role and from there she took over the driving seat becoming better in the space of the long six hour afternoon shift she carried, admittedly.

News Night anchors Iman Rappetti and Jeremy Maggs presented coverage from the IEC Results Centre. Courtesy: Iman Rappetti's Twitter

I must say I admired the channels "All hands on deck" approach when it came to having reporters literally stationed around the country. Late night, weekend and fill in anchor Fenly Foxen was used as a reporter, along with eNews Late Edition and weekend edition hosts Robyn Smith and Amy McIver were used as reporters as well, Robyn from the Northern Cape and Amy as an exceptional interviewer at the IEC Centre (she should really take on the role more often). All senior anchors (Jeremy Maggs, Dan Moyane and Iman Rappetti) anchored short panel sessions from the IEC Centre. eNCA was the only channel that used their "studio" at the IEC  Centre as "soft segments" (segments done from a couch).

The channel had reporters at all of the IEC's provincial centres

The channel carried a special edition of Late Night News with the brilliant Loyiso Gola at 9:30pm, which I am not sure was a smart move as this was just thirty minutes after polls officially closed and thus there must have been a large amount of live crossings that could have been done in that slot.

JoAnne Jospeh along with analysts Angelo Fick and Justice Malala carried the channels Election Day coverage from 6pm to midnight

Their graphics for the election results which started appearing at 9pm were just the right size, not too small or too big and distracting (like ANN's). As results started to trickle in Joanne Joseph kept consulting with her brilliant panel of Angelo Fick (who is now a permanent member of the eNCA team) and Justice Malala, who all were great initially, started fading as time ticked by. What do you expect if you going to be speaking to the same two people for six hours?

Post midnight, the first major interview the channel got was with with DA leader Hellen Zille who spoke to now midmorning anchor CathyMohlahlana from the IEC Election Centre.

Overall, this was amazing coverage, but could have presented more excitingly.