SABC3 schedule shakeup: Big news and actuality shifts and cuts

SABC3 this past week announced a new 'autumn schedule' (just anther name for a shakeup) which sees major changes for nearly all the channel's news and actuality programmes. here are the highlights:


The Prime Time News bulletin moves half an hour earlier
The channel's main English news bulletin, Prime Time News with Francis Herd and Peter Ndoro, moves thirty minutes earlier to 6pm. This now moves it out of direct competition with the only other prime-time English news bulletin, etv's eNews Direct.

Though this might disturb the gradual build in audience the bulletin has seen, it is not necessarily bad, in fact its good programming from the SABC: From 5:30pm daily, the SABC will now have at least one news bulletin available on its free to air broadcasts (and takes the English and Afrikaans bulletins out of direct competition with each other) at any given time until 7:30pm. That's two hours of nonstop free to air primetime news cascaded across their three free to air news channels.

One thing we don't know from this change is how it will affect the business news bulletin that currently airs in its slot on SABC News Channel. SABC3's bulletin is just a simulcast of SABC News Channel, which currently airs a business-centric bulletin at 6pm. Whether that simply shifts later or gets canceled all together is not yet known.

This is also not the first shift for the bulletin that used to air at 8pm way back in the day. After an extended period at 7pm, the bulletin was shifted to 6pm as it could no longer compete directly with what at the time was a very highly rated news bulletin on etv (those ratings have absolutely plummeted since being shifted to 6:30pm). The bulletin was then extended for an hour to 7pm, before losing its first 30 minutes again, resulting in it airing in its current 6:30pm slot.

Expresso loses half an hour
 SABC3's breakfast show, Expresso (which just last weekend won Best Variety Show at the SAFTA's), will be losing 30 minutes of air to return back to being a two and a half hour show. However, the half hour being cut is the 6am half hour (to make way for a kiddies block) and not the recently added 8:30am half hour.

This means that Expresso, which once was the first breakfast show on air daily back when it started, going live at 5:30am, will now be the last breakfast show on any South African channel to go on air in the morning. Though that may be considered a negative for a news-centric show, Expresso is not that, they are a laid back chat show and cutting their least profitable half hour is not a bad thing.

Deutsche Welle is back
After silently replacing the German news service's broadcast on SABC2 with SABC News, DW, which is an international news service based in Germany, is back on the air on the SABC, now airing between 11:30pm and 2am daily.

Though it is not bad to have a massive two and a half hours  of fresh news content every evening in a time when the channel is used to airing reruns, airing DW isin contravention of whatever policy the SABC has that allowed it to cancel The Big Debate, which has subsequently moved to etv: That of the SABC not airing news content that it does not have editorial control over.

SABC News reruns
After DW goes off the air, overnights continue with SABC News content. It is uncertain what will happen to the SABC News' overnight feed on SABC2 as it makes no sense for  both channels to be airing the same thing at the same time for over three hours.

Afternoon Express and Real Talk with Anele swap slots
Afternoon Express now gets a slot in the actual afternoon and not the early evening at 4pm while Real Talk with Anele, which does generate a massive amount of social media buzz, now gets the lucrative 5pm slot where it can be sampled by an even larger potential audience.

Trending SA moves earlier, loses Fridays, loses reruns
The channel's relatively late night show, Trending SA, moves half hour earlier to 9:30pm, a timeslot when more people are actually still watching tv, meaning it no longer goes off air at 11pm.
In addition, it loses its Friday night slot, a night when most tv shows have lower viewership in any case.
The show also now completely vacates the 12pm slot, where it has been airing as a rerun since being moved from airing original episodes then. In its place are other reruns and... Hollywood News (why not).

Current Affairs
Special Assignment now moves to Monday's at 9pm, where it can compete with eNCA's Justice Factor for social media buzz (let's be honest, social media buzz, which does not generate cash, is a major factor considered now when scheduling is compiled).
Interface gets canceled completely in favour of celebrity stuff.

Finally, Funatix, the tween day time show that airs when children arein school, is now completely cancelled.

The rest of the channel's changes is just a shuffling of daytime reruns.

SABC3 announces slew of new unscripted shows

SABC3 today made official  a slew of new shows, most of which are unscripted local fare, including a new, fully-fledged weekend breakfast show.

Expresso/Weekend Edition
With the news of Expresso getting an additional thirty minutes during the weekcomes the news that the channel will be going all in with a breakfast show on the weekends.
One thing that is uncertain is what the show will be called: the official press release says "Weekend Editon" whilst many in the media says it will be called Expresso.
The show will be hosted by Phat Joe and Khanyi Mbau. Joe is a long time radio dj (who I am a fan of) and also hosts the Real Goboza on SABC1. Mbau recently finished a near three year run with her own weekly talk show, Katch It with Khanyi Mbau on etv/eKasi+.
It was not made clear whether the show will be aired live from the Expresso studio in Cape Town or if it will originate from Johannesburg.
Saturdays and Sundays at 6am-9am

Tween Talk Live
A daily live show targeted to viewers 9-12, who are still at school when the show airs at 2pm daily.
The focus is on learning important life skills.

Larger Than Life
Comedian Jason Goliath hosts the country's first daily late night comedy-chat show. Goliath is not new to the SABC3 audience, having competed on the most recent season of Strictly Come Dancing.
The focus is on youth and pop culture.
Monday to Thursday at 10pm

Current affairs show, Special Assignment, moves from Sunday evenings to Wednesdays at 9:30pm, a slot it held quite a few years ago.

Real Talk with Anele Mdoda (Starts 21 July)
This is the replacement for 3Talk we have been waiting for (not the daily live Top Billing episode called Afternoon Express with nothing being 'Express' about it): The show will feature topical discussions and interviews about current affairs, entertainment and other information.
Will slant slightly toward the female audience
Daily at 4pm

Expresso gets extended

With the SABC's COO, Hlaudi Motsoeneng, driving the growth of local content on all of the SABC's platforms, a look at SABC3's schedule for next month shows that its breakfast show, Expresso, will be expanded by thirty minutes from the early next month.

This follows just a few weeks after etv expanded its breakfast show, Sunrise, to 3 hours as well. However, Sunrise airs from 5:30am whilst Expresso will now air for three hours from 6am.

This also means that Expresso will be the last major breakfast show on air every morning as SABC2's Morning Live ends at 8am (the third hour is exclusive to the SABC News Channel).

As the channel has been mandated to expand its local content quota to 80%, Expresso's sister show, Afternoon Express, will now air an hour later from 5pm (barely the afternoon, but okay) to make room for a new talk show at 4pm.

When it rains, it pours, and there will be an even further two new daily talk shows on SABC3 come 4 July. A chat show aimed at the youth audience will air at 2pm (when they still in school). This means that the SABC will now offer three hours of back to back live, local youth content across its channels: This new yet to be named show on SABC3 at 2pm, YOTV Live on SABC1 at 3pm and Hectic Nine9 on SABC2 at 4pm.

The other new show is going to be a late night show at 10pm (which I am very excited about, even though nothing is known yet. It will be the country's first daily one hour late night show)

SABC 3 Announces Cricket World Cup Plans

SABC 3, the public broadcaster's cricket channel of choice, has announced their Cricket World Cup plans, well they kind of did considering it excludes the names of hosts and commentators.

The free to air broadcaster will provide live coverage of thirty matches, including all of the Proteas' matches, the opening match, two quarterfinals, one semi final and the final.

On cricket days, the channel's breakfast show, Expresso, will not be aired, along with other midmorning repeats.

Ocassionally, the business-centric News@1 and Africa News Update will also be set aside for cricket action, though they will still be broadcast on The SABC News Channel.

For once, the channel's late afternoon and prime time schedules will not be affected by the cricket.

I will update this post when more specifics become available.