All News Channels Carry President Zuma's Address about the Marikana Report

eNCA, SABC News Channel and ANN7 all provided extensive coverage about President Zuma's Address to the nation about the Marikana Report.

The speech ran for 32 minutes, from 7:02pm to 7:34pm.

eNCA's coverage was anchored by Jeremy Maggs, with a 2 man in studio panel. Their analysis included in studio debate as well as live crossings to Iman Rappetti who was with families of victims of the Massacre, and Thulasizwe Simelani who was at Parliament getting reaction from the likes of DA reps. Their analysis extended for well after the actual address and the channel ended up preempting this evenings edition of Money Line.
The semi final episode of Tech Report at 9:30pm also got preempted.

SABC News Channel's coverage was simulcast on SABC 2, preempting the Afrikaans News and part of the Sotho news. Their coverage was anchored by Vuyo Mvoko. Though I love the way they use Mvoko as the anchor of their bigger news events so that when viewers see him onscreen they know its big news, constantly benching their regular prime time anchors (Vabakshnee Chety and Peter Ndoro, who anchored this morning's The New Age Buiness Brief) is starting to show a lack of faith in the duo. SABC News Channel was the first of the broadcaster to go back to scheduled programming with Sports Live at 8:30pm

ANN7 Prime with Cand Harris, Sebenzile Nkambule, Ricky Naidoo

ANN7's buildup started well before 7pm, meaning that this evening's edition of Game On! was preempted and will instead be broadcast in its traditional repeat slot of 10:30pm. The coverage was anchored by the new ANN7 Prime anchors Sebenzile Nkambule and Candy Harris. Their three man in studio panel included political editor (and host of Straight Talk) Ricky Naidoo. They also had live crossings to Kevin Brandt who was outside parliament.


If you look at stills at the top of this article, you will see both eNCA and ANN7 both actually had to get the video feed from the SABC News Channel as the state broadcaster was the only one that was allowed to have a camera present at the address.
This led to the onscreen graphics on both eNCA and ANN7 becoming messy with their graphics superimposed upon the SABC's.
When the SABC put up their full lower thirds banner, eNCA decided to black out that part of the screen, leading to nearly a third of the screen being black (though it is technically more on tv's like mine with a letterboxed aspect ratio.

Then, in what I think is a dirty tactic on the part of the SABC News Channel to get free advertising, they decided to remove the small SABC News logo at the bottom of the screen, which was covered by eNCA's and ANN7's graphics and instead put up the massive graphic where the two independent stations couldn't hide it without making the screen too cluttered. They even put a solid backing on the usually transparent logo to make it more eye catching, something they had never done before.

It is really worrying when only one broadcaster, the public broadcaster, is allowed to have a camera at an address by the president of the camera as it could lead to censorship: if that one SABC News Channel camera gets cut for whatever reason, no one outside of the venue would have access to it.

SABC 2 Adds Deutsche Welle To Overnight Hours

 

SABC 2, the public broadcaster's second most popular channel, has added news and actuality programming from the English service of the Germain broadcaster, Deutsche Welle, to its overnight hours.

The addition of Deutsche Welle (which I will admit I do not know how to pronounce) replaces the beyond stale reruns of old news programmes from the SABC's SABC News International channel, which shut down back in 2010, with repeats airing until the end of November 2014.

Deutsche Welle, which is Germain for "Germain Wave" and often stylised as simply DW, is a service that is described as being similar in nature to France24, BBC World News and Voice of America. In other words, a channel that is meant to create a good image of a certain country, the country that pays its bills, while conveying the news.
 
The introduction of DW to the SABC 2 schedule follows years after the SABC dumped CNN International from being broadcast overnight. The only difference between CNN providing news overnight on the public broadcaster and DW is that CNN is seen as a completely independent news organsiation while DW is not.

 DW is not of course new to the South African market as it has been seen on various community stations like Cape Town TV, where it is featured alongside Al Jazeera.

Though the addition of DW to SABC2's schedule is not best choice I would have made, it certainly trumps old news that is at least 4 years old at its youngest. It remains a good, fresh source of international news for whoever might be up at that hour and not have access to a 24 hour news service, or those that do have access to a 24 hour news service getting a different perspective on the news as DW is not available as a standalone channel on either DStv or Starsat.

Whether the addition of DW is a step forward or back is debatable, considering back when the SABC dumped Siki Mgabadeli's Big Debate, the reason for dumping that show was that the SABC did not want to have any news and actuality content on its air not produced by themselves.

When the SABC launched its previous news channel back in 2007, SABC News International, then President Thabo Mbeki was quoted as saying they do not need other countries to tell African stories, which now seems to be happening again now.

Afrikaans News Channel Switch By The Numbers

With the SABC's Afrikaans news now back on SABC 2 after a stint on SABC 3, I thought it would be interesting to compare the viewership the bulletin experiences on SABC 2 with what it experienced during its stay on SABC 3.

What was initally a channel shift that was to last for 4 weeks  during the Soccer World Cup  ended up being a planned permanent move that saw the overall schedules and alignment of SABC 2 and 3 shifting.

But the move was met by a massive viewer outcry and after a 20 week and 2 day run on SABC3 at 7:30pm, the Afrikaans news was back at 7pm on SABC2. The move back to SABC2 also 'effectively' means that the duration of the news bulletin returned to 1 hour as the Afrikaans team continues their broadcast on The SABC's news channel on DStv 404 at 7:30pm whereas it was merely just a thirty minute simulcast when the bulletin was on SABC 3.

And now, the numbers
For the last full week that the SABC's Afrikaans news was on SABC2 (the week of 2 - 8 June 2014), the bulletin averaged 1 416 000 viewers.

During the following week, the bulletin made the switch to SABC 3 and therefore the Afrikaans news was shown on both channels during one week. For that week, the days it was shown on SABC 2 averaged 1 702 000 viewers. With the shift to SABC 3 during that same week, viewership plummeted 44% to 949 000.

Over the following 20 weeks, the Afrikaans news on SABC3 averaged 967 095 viewers, peaking during the week of the 21st to the 27th of July 1 066 000 viewers, not coming close to the 1.4 million viewers seen just a few weeks prior. In fact, that weeks was only one of three weeks out of the twenty to have more than 1 million viewers, the other being the week of the 7th of July with 1 021 000 viewers and the week of the 8th of September with 1 024 000 viewers.

The bulletin experienced its smallest viewership during the week of the 29th of September with 851 000.

All things Relative
With many things in life, these numbers are related to something else, here being the channel that the news bulletin is on. While on SABC 2, the news bulletin would often feature on that channel's top ten overall most watched programmes, though closer to the bottom of the top ten, while on SABC 3, though the viewership dropped on average quite a bit, it was still a top ten show for SABC 3, though now closer to the top.

This is ABC reaches fewer homes than SABC 2 (and in fact SABC 1 and eTV as well) does and therefore the average SABC 3 programme is less-watched than the average show on any other free to air channel (excluding community broadcasters, of course).

A real life example of the small reach of the channel is that of the Northern Cape where only people in Alexander Bay have access to the channel without having to have a satellite service like DStv or Openview HD.

(As soon as viewership is available for the bulletin's first week back on SABC 2 is available, this article will be updated)

Afrikaans News Saga: Why SABC3's Footprint is Really Something to be Concerned About

In future I would like to do a full analysis of how moving the Afrikaans news from SABC 2 to SABC 3 will affect it but for now I would just like to draw attention to one of the bigger issues at hand in the whole saga: the fact that SABC 3's footprint, the locations where South Africans can receive SABC 3 using a standard aerial, dwarfs that of SABC 2.

The media have used various ways of illustrating this including the overall fewer viewers that SABC 3 has compared to SABC 2 while Thinus went as far as actually providing a count of the amount of towers each channel has.

I am going to use one simple metric: The viewership of Isidingo.

Isidingo is by far the least watched SABC soap on television during primetime. This is no secret. What people rarely know is that when Isiddingo repeats on SABC 1 in the morning, when fewer people watch tv, the viewership of the repeat in the morning beats the viewership of the prime time airing often by sizeable margins.

During the final phase of the group stages of the World Cup, SABC 3 aired some World Cup games, pre empting its schedule, meaning that Isidingo aired on SABC 2 on those days.

Simply shifting the soap from the lesser watched SABC 3 to the more watched SABC 2 caused viewership of the soap to MORE THAN TRIPLE in comparison to viewership of the same soapie in the same week on SABC 3.

Isidingo Viewership (week of 23 to 29 June):
SABC 2 - 5,244,000
SABC 3 - 1,374,000

 This makes me think exactly how many viewers will be missing news in their language while SABC 2 wants to air cheap to produce gameshows in that slot.

SABC Upfronts: Big Changes Happening Across All SABC News programming on SABC1, 2 and 3

The SABC earlier today had its media upfront where they announced major changes coming to their three terrestrial channels, SABC1, SABC2 and SABC3 after the World Cup.
Due to this, many of their news programming will be shuffled around to allow for the changes to be made.

• SABC1's Nguni News, which traditionally aired at 7:30pm, will now air half an hour earlier at 7pm. As the most watched news bulletin in the country, this is more than likely to affect viewership at eNews Prime Time, the most watched English bulletin in the country, negatively. (The difference between the two is usally greater than 1 million viewers)
• SABC2's Afrikaans News bulletin, which temporarily shifted to SABC3 for the World Cup, will be staying on that channel after the World Cup. It is unclear whether the SABC's "flagship" English bulletin, which is currently an hour long, will be cut down to half an hour permanently to accommodate the changes or will it get moved to a different time. This is, however, an extremely smart move by the SABC as it allows Isidingo, the channel's struggling soapie to get a lead-in from an Afrikaans bulletin that usually averages about 800 000 viewers more than its previous English bulletin.
• Actuality show 50/50 also moves to SABC3 permanently.

Other interesting information to come to light at the upfronts include:

• The SABC promosing to invest over R1 billion in local content.
• They have finally confirmed that they definitely are launching another channel on DStv later this year, a general entertainment one.
• SABC News, their first channel launched with DStv last year has grown to become the second most watch news channel in the country, behind other local channel eNCA.

COVERAGE REVIEW: News Channels Cover Jacob Zuma's State of the Nation Address

eNCA (simulcast on eTV), ANN7, SABC News(simulcast on SABC 2), along with CNBC Africa and Parliamentary Service all covered President Jacob Zuma's State of the Nation Address live on 17 June 2014

As expected, all news channels carried Jacob Zuma's SONA address live on Tuesday, June 17th.

ANN7

The biggest disappointment of the coverage must have been ANN7. After covering the previous SONA address and elections so well, their coverage this time around really took one step back.

Because the channel ran a two hour block of non-news from 2:30pm all the way to 5pm, the channel chose to air a general news bulletin in the 5pm slot whilst the other channels all started building up to the event. Their build up then started at 5:30pm with the usual anchor hosting Ricky Naidoo, their political editor, from their studios.

ANN7's Political Aditor, Ricky  Naidoo

At 6pm, prime time anchor Chantal Rutter dros took over with her panel in the studio, and together they all just seemed to over analyse the situation and did not seem to cover the event itself decently, instead opting to just continue an in studio debate while adding a few live shots for good measure.
 Senior political correspondent Hajra Omarjee was on the ground at parliament, but in the hour before the actual speech, they did not even have a satellite (or broadband, considering the channel doesn't mind poor picture quality for on location shots) with her, instead having to have had her phone in, with the phone even losing connection at times. They really dropped the ball on this one as she should have been anchoring from Cape Town like last time around.

Considering the amount of time this channel spends on political news, I must say it is rather odd that they continue to use the Parliamentary Service, a channel all DStv subscribers have access to, as their in parliament coverage and do not receive the 'clean' feed that other channels have, so you will see the logos of the parliamentary service on ANN7, all adding to an overall messy on air presenation considering the different graphic packages.

A more beautiful picture of Cantal Rutter Dros than this I have never seen

They were, however, the last channel to still be covering the event for a few minutes after 9pm, after all other channels have ceased their broadcasts something which they should be commended for. In the 24 hour news business, a channel has 24 hours a day to fill with news, so the longer you can keep live coverage going the better.

eNCA

eNCA's coverage was anchored by Iman Rappetti live from parliament. She was yet again joined by the guys from Power FM, this time Ursula Chhikane and Tim Modise. Andrew Barnes co-anchored News Day from 1pm-4pm live from Parliament as well.

Ursula Chikane of Power FM and Top Billing covered the Red Carpet as part of eNCA's coverage of the second State of the Nation Address of 2014

Ursula provided coverage from the red carpet, something which I must say was a welcomed addition considering usually its a journo that performs this duty yet now they had someone from the glam scene as Ursula is also a Top Billing presenter. Being a Top Billing presenter added a sense of credibility to her contributions to the overall coverage, even though the high quality of her inserts speak for themselves.

Tim Modise speaking to a listener during a Power FM live crossing as part of eNCA's State of the Nation Address coverage

I am personally not a fan of the Power FM inserts. Quite frankly I dislike it.When it comes to covering live events, the best thing to do is to cover it as best you can. Now these inserts not only stops coverage of the events nearly completely, it breaks the rhythm of the broadcast every time Iman crosses over to the radio station, taking about a minute to do the whole hand over, Tim Modise to welcome viewers back (and remind them they can tune in on Power FM), and to tell them to call in as well. This process is repeated every time they hand over to the radio station. Often the listener who called in is not providing opinion that deserves to be aired on a national platform either and just drags the whole thing out, forcing viewers like myself to just easily flip up to the next channel/s as I know I wont be missing much on eNCA.

Iman hosted two analysts in their little studio at Parliament, this time not over analysing things as much as they did in the past. I really dislike the trend on  South African broadcasting of having those large vertical banners on their set seen behind the analysists with the channel logo on. It seems extremely amateur hour as viewers can see which channel they viewing from the onscreen graphics of they could have had a monitor onscreen. Instead, they opt to narrow viewers' view of the happenings outside the window behind the analysts.

eTV's coverage, which started at 7pm had onscreen sign language interpreter on the right side of the screen. The picture on eTV was terrible. Not only was the picture letterboxed with black bars at the top and bottom of the screen, it was pillarboxed as well with black bars on either side of the screen, so the whole picture onscreen had a terrible box all around the picture.

While the other channels provided non stop rolling coverage of the events, eNCA found it okay to take a great load of ad breaks during their coverage, exculding the speech itself, vital time that could have been used to provide coverage. This included parts of the coverage not seen on eTT, so they were not forced to take so many ad breaks. At 8:24 pm, they found it in themselves to take a SIX MINUTE ad break and another four minute one at the top of the next hour, time the other channels used for live coverage.

SABC News
By far the channel with the best coverage of the event, SABC News' coverage was anchored by Vuyo Mvoku and Leanne Manas live from their studio at Parliament.

Leanne Manas and Vuyo Mvoku anchored SABC News' (simulcast on SABC 2) coverage of the State of the Ntaion Address

They got the mix right of keeping analysis to a minimal and live rolling commentary to a maximum right. Most of the time during the build up, the anchors' and guests' voices were just heard and not seen as they opted to keep pictures focussed on what was happening an explained to viewers what was going on and what they were seeing, along with naming people as they came in case viewers might not have known who they were. They had more reporters on the ground than any other news channel as well.

For some or another reason, SABC News had their camera on eNCA's Ursula as she interviewed Mmusi Maimane for quite a while

After the speech, they got response from all the major opposition parties before interviewing ANC members, something that has to be admired from the apparent voicepiece of the ANC.

REVIEW: All News Channels Carry Jacob Zuma's Second Inauguration

ANN7, eNCA and SABC News (simulcast on SABC 2) all carried rolling coverage of South African President, Jacob Zuma's, second inauguration. This is a review across all three  broadcasters.
Firstly, I have been watching live news coverage for many years, and this is the first time I have ever noticed something happening across all three channels: The broadcast and its quality and content totally transformed at 9am. Watching the 6am-9am coverage, I was already planning what I will be writing in the review, but then at 9am, all three news channels switched anchors, reporters, styles, and even program names. The 6am-9am slots are totally different from the 9am-1pm slots in nature. This is in contrast to previous events that had rolling coverage (elections, funerals, etc) where the broadcasters would traditionally aim for as much consistency as possible across the full event and its coverage.

The rest of the review will therefore review the events as two events:
6am-9am

Leanne Manas

On SABC News, the Morning Live team that usually does the show in the week did this special weekend edition of the show. Leanne Manas anchored the broadcast along with Ayanda-Allie Paine, who returned today from study leave. These two really put up an authentically great, feel good  broadcast, undoubtedly the most positive of all broadcasts at the time. Yes, you could argue the SABC is the "mouthpiece" of the ANC, but what made this broadcast truly exceptional was that they took the event for exactly what it was: an inauguration. As such, they were totally void of the over analysis that plagued eNCA and just enjoyed the event, broadcasting directly from the Union Buildings covering the event from all angles, including speaking to pilots that would be part of the fly over, spoke about fashion, a bit of background, speaking to everyday citizens and discussing the guests as they arrived. As they controlled the "official" feed of the event, they had the greatest degree of seamlessness between the show and the feed that was made available to all channels, which ultimately contributed to an overall great broadcast. They also aired an exceptional piece by Ayanda-Allie Paine interviewing the man of the hour himself, Jacob Zuma, over a game of chess in what I must say is the most revealing interview I have ever seen about Jacob Zuma the man.

ANN7 also provided what seems to be developing into the channels reputation these days: none stop, rolling and exceptional coverage of live political events. Today was also the first time I actually enjoyed the channels often annoying use of way too much boxes on screen at the same time: it allowed you to see as many views of the event at the same time. They had what seemed to be the perfect  balance between analysing Jacob Zuma's task ahead and the event itself, along with reports stationed seemingly everywhere around the Union Buildings.

eNCA was a total opposite of the above. Instead of enjoying, and covering the event, the channel did what is seeming to become standard for the channel: just critiquing Zuma along with one single analyst in their studio. The same type of critiquing could be kept for any other day, but they had to put it on today. Uveka Rangappa, who had taken Friday off, anchored the show from their studio, seeming to keep live crossings to a minimum in a broadcast that was really nothing special. At a later stage of the broadcast, they did put the "official" feed on the screen in the studio, but it was too small to really enjoy what was happening. They also took more ad breaks than any other channel.
Watching eNCA's coverage and comparing it to the other two channels made me feel sorry for myself. This is had this inauguration been exactly one year earlier, this channel would have been the only news channel in the country and this flimsy coverage they provided really would not have been able to give the event the coverage it desired as we were just constantly subjected to talking heads none stop while there were other things that could have been talked about instead of the things that they spoke about that, though was relevant, had nearly nothing to do with the event. This really makes me think about which events were covered like this in the past when they were the only channel available.

9am-1pm

Peter Ndoro anchored coverage from the studio

Graphics used for this event was just one of the other graphic packages used in recent months

Vuyo Mvoko anchored coverage from the union Buildings

At just before 9am Leanne Manas handed over to the next anchor on SABC News in quite a creative way, interview him first as if he were any other guess and at some point Vuyo Mvoko just doesn't stop talking and Leanne is gone (along with the graphics quietly being changed) to reflect that Morning Live was no longer on air (this was the only show that used its own brand identity on air). Prime time news reader Peter Ndoro anchored from the studio, though only for very short moments. It was overall a good broadcast, though nothing particularly spectacular and lacking the energy seen in the three hours before it. I was disappointed that their coverage ended promptly at 1pm. As a state broadcatser, one would expect them to go above and beyond to broadcast official state events, but ironically they were the first broadcaster to stop covering the event. Their near total lack of ad breaks was something to be appreciated.

At 9am Vuka Africa anchor Peter van Onselen tooka over duties on ANN7 live from the studio. He was joined by countless reporters at the Union Buildings. He had one guest in studio whom he consulted with, though unlike eNCA, was not the focus, but rather a means to fill "dead" time, which there was very little of considering how much they had to talk about the various African leaders that were arriving. Senior Political Reporter, Hajra Omarjee, once again became a sort of a second anchor live from the Union Buildings with her guests there. I really enjoyed how they allowed the actual event to be the star, having the reporters and anchors only in smll boxes, never cutting away from the official feed. Their vision mixing was exceptional between various camera angles and split screens to ensure you get to see it all, along with stock footage of the likes of Nelson Mandela and Thabo Mbeki's inaugurations. At 1pm there a quick recap of other news before returning to the concert on the Southern lawns, usually listening to one song on stage followed by one news item, though very rarely leaving the feed from the concert. Their exceptional coverage was spoilt when they opted to go to taped programming at 1:30pm instead of staying with events.

Amazing pic from Iman's Twitter

eNCA carried the concert in between reports and ad breaks (which were plenty)

Jeremy Maggs with his often quirky in studio panel

The concert was broadcasted untouched on enca.com

eNCA improved the most from 9am. Jeremy Maggs took over in studio with Iman Rappetti with analysts Justice Malala and Chris Maroleng (who, now that I think about it, contributed very little to election coverage considering what a great journo he is). This team was really great, balancing lighthearted banter with analysis with substance. Iman also pushed the two out for an interview of famous singers like Donald in what was a rather good interview that focussed on the youth, not forgetting a joke on Jeremy Maggs' taste in music, as has become standard with the two on News Night. Overall, it was better coverage than the three hours before, thought hey still had periods of in studio coverage that was just too long, including what was a really good interview on the architecture of the Union Buildings. Their coverage also simulcast on eTV from 11am-1pm, though their actual coverage went well beyond that with a balance of the concert, a few good inserts about the likes of the flag and Nelson Mandela, and also what seems like just too many ad breaks. They also had Cathy Mohlanhlana and Gareth Edwards on the South lawns, where it was just odd seeing Cathy switching between being a reporter and then all of a sudden an ancho