Hajra Omarjee Resigns From ANN7

The excellent Senior Political Correspondent of ANN7, Hajra Omarjee, has resigned from the troubled news channel.

Her last day at the channel was today, December 13th, covering the EFF's first Elective Conference from where she reported throughout the day.

She joined ANN7 last year from eNCA, playing a great roll in many of the new channel's coverage of major events, including the passing of former president Nelson Mandela and anchored the channel's coverage of the State of the Nation Address earlier this year, which was quickly followed by an interview with President Zuma.

Around election time,she started anchoring a new political show, Political Edge, which aired on Sundays and often featured various prominent politicians. The show went off the air on November 24th, with Omarjee and others involved describing it as a "season finale" and that they will be back in the new year, which now will now obviously not happen. After the final aired, she tweeted: "YOU made #PoliticalEdge ANN7's highest rated show. #PoliticalEdge wraps for 2014. Special thanks to @asandamagaqa @ThisLifeJhb @ANN7tv" Many people read this as a goodbye tweet, including certain publications.

The first signs of cracks in her relationship with ANN7 appeared during the controversial exit of Asanda Magaqa from the channel, after Asanda was "escorted" from the news organisation's premises following disciplinary action. Hajra, who represented Asanda at those hearings tweeted the following after Asanda was escorted from the premises: "I feel nauseous, I have a throbbing headache .... I'm going home."

She guest hosted a slot on Johannesburg's newsy radio station, PowerFM, earlier this month. Another person that guest hosted a slot on that station is eNCA's Iman Rapetti, who now anchors a permanent slot on the channel.

ANN7 now has more slots to fill in the new year: Prime time anchor, business anchor and now senior politcal correspondent and host of Political Edge, and all this excludes the countless backstage departures at the channel.

ANN7's Political Edge Wraps Up For 2014

ANN7's highest rated show, Political Edge, has wrapped up its 2014 season earlier this evening, November 24th.

What silently started out as a little 30 minute politics based chat show on a Sunday night has grown into must watch programming for anyone interested in national politics, expanding to 1 hour permanently after constantly running over time during its first few weeks.

With its ability to attract political heavyweights as guests, the show has become television to talk about, often creeping up Twitter's Trending Topics list which, on a Sunday is usually filled with sports and shows like Idols and Big Brother, is not an easy task to achieve.

The show has also tried out various tweaks to its format, bringing in an in-studio audience to ask guests questions, to just being political news analysis to being in-depth political interviews.

The final edition for the year looked back at the year's top politcal stories with panelists Somadoda Fikeni, Adam Habib and Sipho Seepe.

Just as Politcal Edge has grown as a brand worth watching on a Sunday night, so its host, Hajra Omarjee, who is formerly from what is now eNCA, has grown into a top tier anchor.

 When she initially joined ANN7 to become their Senior Political Correspondent, her work as anchor of their State of the Nation Address coverage and other earlier work after making the jump from just being a journalist made me feel skeptical about having her in this expanded role.

However, she soon grew into the perfect all round 'political correspondent' seamlessly flowing between providing analysis during a midweek news report to moderating a debate on a Sunday night.

Politcal Edge, along with Asanda Magaqa's Between the Lines, made ANN7 a news channel worth watching on a Sunday, a relatively slow news day. But Between the Lines was recently suspended indefintely, so the sudden 'end of season' that Politcal Edge had seems very questionable.

Nonetheless, it will be interesting to see what tweaks are made to the show when it returns, if it does, next year on South Africa's youngest news channel.

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.

ANN7 Providing Rolling Coverage of ANC "Mass Rally"

ANN7 starte early Sunday morning, 4 May, with providing on location rolling coverage of the ANC's Siyanqoba rally, the one traditionally held before a major election where over 200 000 ANC supporters are expected to attend this year.

Hajra Omarjee is anchoring from the National Stadium from the media suite usually used by Supersport during major soccer events from the stadium from where she is doing interviews with members from the ranks of the party. The usual anchors are still in studio, but are mainly used to give things like traffic updates to those attending.

This is not Omarjee's  first major ANC event this week as she anchored their May Day rally on Thursday, interestingly the only news channel to do so.

It is going to be a long day for Omarjee from anchoring the coverage in the morning to doing her actaul show, the well done Political Edge at 8pm.

The other news channels are also expected to carry this rally live when it starts. It will also be shown on SABC2 live from 11:00. If you would remember, the last time the ANC ran a major rally before an election, it was broadcast across all three the SABC's free to air channels, this time only on one.

eNCA has aired this week's Maggs on Media from 8:30am as the rally will be broadcast in its traditional slot. The channel has reporter Thula Sims at the ANC rally  while Bongiwe Khumalo is at the EFF's one

As the Election Date Draws Nearer, ANN7 Channels ramp Up Political Coverage

As the May 7th Election Date Draws Nearer, eNCA, ANN7 and SABC News are all pushing their political coverage into overdrive.

On ANN7, as previously reported, they have sent out 9 teams across the country to get the 'man on the ground' feel on issues like service delivery and also conducted a first-of-its-kind election poll in South Africa. Other than two hours dedicated everyday to this program, election and political coverage is also heavily featured in other programs.

 On Sundays, former eNCA political analyst, now at ANN7, Hajra Omarjee anchors Political Edge at 8pm, scheduled for 30 min. However, the edition on Sunday, 13th April ran nearly an hour overtime as she had a debate that drew senior leaders from the DA, ANC, Cosatu and the EFF.

Not only did she have to moderate the leaders that often spoke over each other, she had to control an often rowdy crowd, often resorting to shouting.

Overall, it was a really well done debate done from their broadcast facility, done by one anchor with a not so quiet panel. I must say it was much better than eNCA show The Big Debate that takes a somewhat similar approach, but despite that show not being live, it has a lot of unnecessary  comments on it (I am not against letting 'normal' people having their views aired, I just feel they should be constructive and not repeitive, especially on a show that has the luxury of time to edit the show before airing)

(If you wondering, the news bulletin that had to immediately follow this broadcast was done from a separate green screen facility)

Despite being the least watched of the local news channels, ANN7 is surprisingly able to constantly draw big name guests to all of their shows, especially the well done ANN7 Prime with Chantal Rutter Dros where they have a guest with every story. At the end of Sunday's broadcast, Hajra mentioned she was so humbled that they were able to get the caliber of guests that they did, which was rather nice of her to say.