Eleni Giokos will once again be filling in for an anchor on a CNN business news show this week.
This time it will be CNNMoney with Maggie Lake (though Eleni Giokos, even though Maggie Lake's name is in the show's name). Whilst Quest Means Business' broadcast time is at the end of the US business day, CNNMoney airs at the start, so it is kind of a change of gear for Giokos since the last time anchoring.
Eleni's odd tour of CNN's US bureaux continues this week. Three weeks ago she filled in for Richard Quest on Quest Means Business and then flew down to Atlanta (where the version of CNN we receive in South Africa originates from) to meet up with the Marketplace Africa team, a show she regularly contributes to but never gets to see the people that put it together on the other side of the world.
CNNMoney with Maggie Lake airs daily at 3pm CAT on DStv 401.
The excellent South African financial anchor/reporter, Eleni Giokos, will be filling in for Richard Quest on Quest Means Business this entire week.
'Questie' is on assignment this week, trying to fly around the world in 8 days using only budget airlines.
Throughout the day today, former colleagues of Eleni have been congratulating her and wishing her well, including Bronwyn Nielsen, who worked with her at CNBC Africa tweeting, "@EleniGiokos to host @questCNN live from New York this week. Fantastic for Eleni and Africa! Congrats - break a leg!" Also, Nikiwe Bikitsha, who worked with Eleni at eNCA tweeted her support, "Don't miss @EleniGiokos in for @richardquest on CNN all week at 11pm CAT live from New York. A proud moment for #Africa #SouthAfrica."
This also means that CNN will have two South African anchors on air this week, with Robyn Curnow anchoring iDesk.
This fill in is definitely not coincidental. Something is definitely brewing behind the scenes as CNN usually has a whole hierarchy of fill ins for Quest, including anchors and reporters based in New York or the London studio. So flying someone across the world to do the show usually means there is a major meeting with management that the anchor has or that this is a screen test for something bigger. This follows the same pattern of Robyn Curnow flying to Atlanta to fill in for other anchors before receiving a weekday slot of her own.
Quest Means Business airs on CNN (DStv 401) weekdays at 11pm CAT.
Back in July I said that Eleni Giokos was the biggest free agent in South African journalism following her departure from Bloomberg when it shut its Bloomberg Africa division.
Now, just a few hours ago, it was announced that Eleni Giokos will be joining CNN as a South African-based business correspondent, focussing on African financial issues. She will be working out of the Johannesburg Bureau. She will also obviously be contributing to shows like African Voices and Marketplace Africa.
Early in her career, Giokos was a reporter-anchor at CNBC Africa before joining the then eNews Channel in a role that was yet to be decided. Initially she did fill in anchoring, mainly as the prime time business anchor and reporting on financial issues before settling on the mid morning slot. Whilst at the then eNews Channel, Giokos covered stories like the World Economic Forum from Davos.
She left the renamed eNCA in October 2013 after being offered a senior position at the newly launched Bloomberg TV Africa, but was left out in the cold when earlier this year Bloomberg shut its African division as part of budget cuts. Since then she has done freelance work for South African news outlets like eNCA and 5FM before finally signing with CNN today.
Eleni is the third major eNCA almni to join CNN in the past year or so, joining the likes of Derek van Dam and Robyn Kriel who joined CNN from the South African news channel.
She joins CNN's ever expanding financial news division, which includes the highly successful cnnmoney.com brand. In addition, she joins an ever expanding African presence by CNN which includes Robyn Kriel in East Africa, David McKenzie in South Africa and Soni Methu throughout the rest of the pan African region.
To announce her signing with CNN, Giokos tweeted, "Beyond excited to announce that I've just joined @cnni," followed by retweets of congratulations throughout the day.
Mike McCarthy, Senior Vice President, Programming, at CNN International, said: “Eleni is an enormously talented and versatile broadcaster. She has interviewed world leaders, covered major breaking news stories, and presented network feature programmes. Her appointment underlines our commitment to African stories and African audiences. We’re delighted to have her here at CNN.”
Her first day on air was actually today at 17:15 with an interview with Vodacom CEO Shameel Joosub on Marketplace Africa.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
On May 13th, 2013 Giokos hosted Richard Quest from CNN on her then usual slot on eNCA when Quest was in South Africa. Check out the videos below:
That evening, Giokos also appeared live on Quest Means Business, which was anchored live from CNN's Johannesburg bureau, which will be Giokos' new workplace.
Eleni Giokos, the amazing financial news anchor, has left Bloomberg TV Africa.
Prior to working at Bloomberg TV Africa, Gokos was seen on CNBC Africa as an anchor, and then on eNCA, where she did both business reporting and anchoring, as well as general news anchoring. She left eNCA in late 2013 to pursue new territory at Bloomberg, who at the time were still in the process of expanding their African operations beyond simply being a simulcast of Bloomberg's European feed.
She anchored and reported for Bloomberg's African properties, Business Week Africa and other speciality magazine shows, and also reported for the international Bloomberg properties on African issues.
She silenty left Bloomberg TV Africa at some point over the last three months and has simply been doing freelance reporting on finncial issues, most prominently the Greek crisis.
Since leaving Bloomberg TV Africa, Giokos has appeared multiple times on her old stomping rounds, eNCA, reporting mainly on Morning News Today and News Night.
She has even appeared on DJ Fresh's radio show on 5FM as well as on Radio 702, and also Bloomberg TV Africa.
It goes without saying that Eleni Giokos is currently THE hottest free agent in broadcast journalism today. I hope she ends up on a platform where she gets the airtime she deserves.
As previously reported, Nikiwe Bikitsha has left eNCA, eventually revealing that she chose to return to her roots in radio at Cape Talk/Radio 786.
Courtesy os the Twitter account of Nikiwe Bikitsha
This has left two voids in the eNCA schedule: 4-6pm and 7pm on eNews Prime Time.
Courtesy: enca.com
On eNCA, it was midmorning anchore gareth Edwards that stepped up to take the 4pm-6pm slot. This is his umpteenth slot change since joining the channel at launch when it was still called eNews Channel, initially as sports anchor, then late night/fill in anchor, then mid morning anchor solo, then breakfast show anchor along with Ayanda Allie Payne when the channel rebranded to eNCA, then again demoted back to midmorning anchor along with Eleni Giokos (ironically, to fill a void left by Mac Moleli who had left the channel after being demoted from the breakfast slot to make way for Gareth in the morning), then when Eleni left eNCA for Bloomberg he was joined by JoAnne Josephs, who had came to mid morning so that Nikiwe could get the 4pm slot. Now, instead of moving JoAnne back to 4pm, they leaving her in the morning (which could be considered a major responsibility as most breaking news happens during that slot, eg. Parliamentary sessions, press conferences, marches, court cases, etc.), they gining the slot to Gareth, who has consistently shown why he is the channels only self made 'news stars' that weren't brought from elsewhere.
The energy, chemistry and passion displayed by the mid morning duo of JoAnne Josephs and Gareth Edwards I one that I have enjoyed so much that I am a firm believer that these two could anchor a quality primetime slot in the future. Such a pity they will be broken up
Another responsibility of the 4pm anchor is that he immediately becomes the go-to person if they need a fill in for the prime time shows eNCA News Night and eNews Prime Time.
Courtesy enca.com, because they don't seem to delete old anchor pages
On eTV, Macfarlane Molelie will be taking over for Nikiwe. A former breakfast show host on eNCA, he left the channel a few months after being relegated to the less-watched and longer mid morning show. He is back with the group now, but on eTV as the anchor of the most watched English news bulletin in South Africa , eNews Prime Time. He will be anchoring on Mondays and Wednesdays, alternating with long time anchor Pat Pillai who will be doing Tuesdays and Thursdays. The Late Edition and weekend editions of eNews Prime Time (along with holidays) will continue to originate from Cape Town with the likes of Robin Smith (who, too, is a former eNCA anchor) at the helm.
Let's see how long eNews can go without having to shuffle anchors yet again.
