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.

SABC journalists robbed while covering xenophobic protests

@Sipho_stuurman (twitter)

An SABC crew who were covering yesterday's pro-xenophobic march (There's no other name for it) in Attridgeville, Pretoria were robbed by the protestors who were also looting stores mainly owned by foreign nationals.

The reason for the robbery? The protestors  said they do not trust the media.

The South African National Editors Forum (SANEF) stated that they urged the police to arrest the protestors that robbed the SABC crew of their equipment and cellphones, among other things.

Chriselda  Lewis, who was also covering the protests for the SABC, tweeted that they managed to 'negotiate' the tv camera back and the entire crew continued providing comprehensive coverage on the protest action.

[It was really beautiful actually to see how the crew managed the incident: as soon as all was over, they continued  excellently covering the event without inserting themselves into the story for a moment to shine]

SABC shifts news bulletin on SABC2 yet again

Another AFCON tournament means yet another schedule shuffle for the SABC's free to air channels, affecting the domestic langauge news bulletins, again.

The Afrikaans news bulletin, which has slowly been rebuilding its audience in the 7:30pm slot for the past few months now moves an hour earlier to 6:30pm, competing directly with SABC3's English news bulletin and etv's eNews Direct for audience share. The drop in viewers expected for the Afrikaans news bulletin won't be too bad as its lead-in, 7de Laan, now moves to the 6pm slot (which in itself is a slot on SABC2 that has struggled terribly in the past no matter what gets placed there).

The Sotho news bulletin, which was brought earlier a while ago due to viewer complaints about waiting too long for the news, now goes back to a later timeslot, 8pm, where it will compete with ratings giant, Generations, on SABC1.

These changes come into effect from Monday, 6 February after the conclusion of the AFCON tournament.

Vabakshnee Chetysigning off from SABC News for the last time

Co anchor of the SABCs flagship English news bulletin, Vbakshnee Chetty, has announced that she will be signing off from the SABC for the last time tomorrow evening, Friday, 21 January 2017.


This as she plans to emigrate with her husband, who got a job opportunity, to Chicago. At this time, she ha nothing lined up for herself on the other side of the pond, instead focussing on adjusting to the new setting and taking care of her young baby.

Vabakshnee has been anchoring Prime Time News, technically since its inception in 2013 when the SABC News Channel launched. She had conanchored the bulletin in its prior form as a one hour news bulletin on SABC3. Chetty leaving also marks the first time since March last year that a South African news channel's prime time lineup changes.

Chetty has been with the SABC since the start of her career fifteen years ago, filling various roles through the years. In addition to anchoring on SABC TV, she is also an anchor on the SABC's SAFM radio station.

Since announcing her departure, she has been retweeting farewell messages from colleagues and friends. SABC reporter, Thabiso Sithole tweeted, "Ja neh, not cool. So @vabakshnee, which one are you making your cameo on first? Chicago PD, Chicago Fire or Chicago MED. You Love TV moss.."

It is unclear who will fill her seat on Prime Time News going forward, but it is expected that Francis Herd will sit alongside her coanchor, Peter Ndoro in the interim. Herd filled her seat last year when Chettywas on maternity leave.

Guptas tried to buy stake in SABC News Channel

The inquiry into the state of affairs of the public broadcaster began this past week. Among the more interesting revelations of the inquiry this past week was that the Gupta family attempted to buy a stake in the SABC's 24-hour news channel, SABC News Channel (DStv 404).

This is according to Phil Molefe, who was the group's head of news at one point in time and acting CEO thereafter.

Though it would be less controversial if they tried to buy a stake in, say, SABC1, attempting to buy a stake in the public broadcaster's news channel is something that should be raising more concern than what it is. You cannot separate the 24-hour news channel from the newsroom and news gathering operations.

There is also absolutely no way that trying to buy shares in a news channel can be pure of intention. News channels have extremely high operating costs and are generally not profitable to run. Organisations around the world run news channels mainly for the prestige and the only way CNN was able to make a reported $1billion dollars in profit this year is because of record high viewership driving up ad revenue and transmission fees from different pay-tv platforms not only in the US but around the world.  Now consider the fact that SABC News Channel's only income would be transmission fees from Multichoice (ad revenue is small for pay tv channels in SA).

What is the return on investment the Guptas could have received? Editorial influence of the country's largest news organsisation?

This bit of information also adds new perspective on the launch of ANN7. South African went five years with having just one news channel (eNCA), but went a mere three weeks with having two as ANN7 went on air in what seemed to be a rushed launch just 21 days after SABC News Channel went on air.

ANN7 is part of Infinity Media, which has among its shareholders the same Gupta family that tried to buy a stake in a public news channel.

[THIS ARTICLE IS DIFFERENT IN STYLE COMPARED TO MY RECENT WORK. FEEDBACK WOULD BE APPRECIATED]

Mid Term Budget Coverage Amid Student Protests

The SABC News Channel,  which has dedicated much less airtime to the student protests compared to the other news channels, covered the middterm budget from parliament as if there was no other big news happening in the country at the same time. Business anchor, Francis Herd, anchored coverage from the SABC's studio at parliament. Having a business news anchor and not a general news anchor at parliament also indicates the channel had no intention of shifting away from budget coverage to protest coverage. However, Francis did briefly mention the protests.  The SABC's budget buildup and coverage was simulcast on SABC3 from the 1pm hour, then SABC2 for the next 2 hours.

When it became clear that the happenings outside parliament would be affecting what goes on inside, the SABC decided to add a bit more focus to what was going on outside.

ANN7 showed scenes of student protesters outside parliament

On ANN7, it was as if the Midterm Budget speech was just another location of protests, i.e. only covering parliament from perspective of protesting students and not Minister Nene's speech. They continued with wall to wall coverage of the protests throughout the day. Kevin Brandt was situated outside parliament. The channel went live to parliament at 2pm, with no actual buildup to the speech. They added a video box with scenes outside parliament at about 2:20pm.

eNCA tried to find a common ground, covering the budget speech as normal as possible, with Andrew Barnes at parliament as usual, but not in the usual glass studio they have. He was instead among the protestors getting an on the ground feeling among the protestors. Throughout coverage of the proceedings, eNCA had a video box on screen showing live pictures from outside parliament.

CNBC Africa's prebudget panel

CNBC Africa covered the budget speech live, hosting both a preview and review panel on each side of the speech.

Like last year, Business Day TV did not provide any live coverage of the Mid Term Budget Speech.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
At 2:43pm, Minister of Finance, Nhlanhla Nene, finally [tried to] started speaking on the budget, but this was followed by a "fees must fall" chant.

2:47pm: The EFF's Ministers in Parliament were escorted out of the National Assembly

2:47pm Students have broken through the entrance of parliament. eNCA's Lester Kiewit is only reporter live on the scene covering this

2:49 Minister Nene continues speech. eNCA shows Minister in small block while allowing the scenes  outside parliament to play out with full audio.

SABC News split screen of Minister Nene and student protestors

2:53 Stun grenades go off outside parliament as Minister continues to speak
SABC News goes split screen with Minister in parliament. ANN7 completely removes small video box from happenings outside parliament


3:07pm Not one local news channel (except CNBC Africa) is providing major coverage of the midterm budget speech anymore

2:55 ANN7 Cut away from budget speech completely, covering protests outside instead. Kevin Brandt is calling in

3:02pm Andrew barnes notes he has never seen this big of a crowd attracted to a midterm budget speech.

3:10pm Gates of parliament are closed with students now locked out

Business anchor, Francis Herd, has been taken off the air of the SABC News Channel with their coverage being shifted to their studio in Johannesburg, anchored by Anita
Nomawethu Solwandle is reporting live via phone on SABC News Channel

3:31pm eNCA becomes first major news channel to return to proceedings in parliament
3:34pm Minister Nene finishes his speech, which was barely seen by viewers other than those wathcing on CNBC Africa. MP's are advised to go to their offices after parliament session ends until they advised to 'leave safely'

3:35pm MMusi Maimane requests the President and Minister Nzimande go address the people outside

3:36pm House adjurns fo the day (I have no idea what was said in the budget speech)

After budget speech, SABC News Channel tries to do classical post budget tradition of getting reaction from Ministers in Parliament, and CNBC Africa is analysing the budget.
eNCA and ANN7 focusing solely on the riots.

Details of SABC News' Schedule Tweaks and What Has Not Really Changed

From the start of April, the SABC News Channel (DStv 404) has tweaked their primetime schedule slightly. Here are the details:

The 5:30pm Question Time sees a bit of a format change, now originating from the main news set used for the english prime time news bulletin and, more importantly, airing live. This is for viewers to now phone in and ask questions on a show that has consistently been able to attract mainly big name political figures (though it is kind of annoying when the caller does not get straight to the question).

The 6:30pm Prime Time News has now been extended back to a 90 minute bulletin, now occupying the 7:30pm half hour as well (The 6pm Business Review with Francis Herd remains unchanged).

The Afrikaans news bulletin that aired at 7:30pm now falls away. However, the SABC is meeting viewers half way with this by changing the format of the long running Nuus Om 7 on SABC 2 to the double-anchored format that was used on the SABC News Channel and was apparently well received by viewers.

The rest of the evenings schedule remains largely unchanged with only the late night local language bulletins seeing a slight change in their schedule with the introduction of a repeat of the Afrikaans bulletin at midnight.

This is what is NOT happening:
If you have been reading Thinus Ferreira's TV With Thinus over the last few days, you would think the SABC has declared war on local language news because they have apparently cut the local language bulletins that aired on the SABC News Channel and replaced them with repeats of local language bulletins that aired on SABC 1 and SABC 2.

This is not the case as the local language bulletins that airs on the SABC News Channels have always been repeats and, with the exception of the Afrikaans bulletin, has never been live.

The guy is trying to spin a simple cutting of one Afrikaans bulletin into a total war on local languages, which is definitely not occuring.

Overall, very little changes with the exception of Question Time now airing live.

Vuyo Mvoko Robbed While Preparing For Live Shot

SABC Contributing Editor, Vuyo Mvoko, and his crew were mugged outside Milpark Hospital in Johannesburg while getting ready to go live on the SABC News Channel.

He was covering the arrival of Zambian President, Edgar Lungu at the hospital (Mvoko, of course, regularly covers continental stories for the news organisation).

Late on Tuesday evening he tweeted that he was "safe and sound" and linked to the video of the mugging, which shows the faces of the perpetrators, who were later identified (and ridiculed on social media). 

UPDATE: The South African National Editor's Forum sent out the following statement on March 11th:
 The South African National Editors’ Forum notes with concern the mugging of SABC Contributing Editor Vuyo Mvoko and several senior staffers, captured on camera outside Johannesburg’s Millpark Hospital, as he was about to cross live for a 7pm television news segment on Tuesday night.  One of Vuyo’s muggers is clearly heard exhorting his colleague to “shoot the dog”. The SABC crew were robbed of their cellphones and a laptop, but thankfully were not harmed. Every South African lives with the reality of crime, but to see thugs brazenly ignoring television cameras and robbing media workers in the course of their work, yet again brings home the level of criminality in our society. The muggers are clearly identifiable on camera and we hope that arrests and prosecution will occur soon. Sanef appeals to members of the public who recognise the men to do the right thing and alert the police to their identities and whereabouts so that the law can take its course.

Budget Coverage Recap

SABC News' business anchor, Francis Herd, and Morning Live's Ayanda Allie Paine broadcast from Cape Town (side note: both are former eNews anchors). Francis was also the first journo to get an interview with Minister Nene after his speech. 

eNCA had business anchor Arabile Gumede in studio from early morning in their buildup to the budget speech.Bhavna Singh and Andrew Barnes anchored News Day from Parliament. Due to the budget speech, eTV viewers got to see the full edition of News Day from 1pm until 4pm. Later in the day, eNCA balanced their budget coverage with the latest developments in the leaked documents saga.

On ANN7, Juliet Newell anchored from their studio in Johannesburg. I don't know if her sitting in for Karabo Yibe today was a coincidence or not, but Juliet is of course a former business anchor at Summit TV (now Business Day TV). Avumile Qongqo was in Thembisa getting reaction on the budget from regular citizens.

Of course, as expected, both Business Day TV amd CNBC Africa provided round the clock coverage on the budget.

SONA2015: SABC News and their Vanilla Reporting

By far the most disappointing coverage of the SONA Address, the SABC really did nothing to distance themselves from their reputation as the 'mouthpiece of the ANC.'

They were the last channel to go an air with rolling coverage of the event at 5:30pm with anchors Ayanda-Allie Paine and Vuyo Mvoko, and were the first to stop covering the event not too long after President Zuma stopped talking (probablyvso that Ayanda could get enough sleep to throw softball questions at the president at the next morning's The New Age Breakfast Briefing).

The channel did not have any independent or other form of analyst in studio, with the two anchors providing a very lightweight preview of the adddress and just letting viewers enjoyvthe view of what they are seeing.

This would have been okay during any other year, but for the broadcast to nearly flat out ignore the elephant in the room in the preview was rather pathetic.

What makes things worse is that they completely ignored the arrival at the EFF at parliament or the chaos around the blocking of the signal, which included the protest that took place in Parliament.

If you are one of the millions of viewers that make the SABC the most watch channel during events like this, you.would have had no idea of what was really going on.

I have nothing further to say.

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.

When the Weather Anhor Joins the Regular Anchor

So today I was watching The SABC News Channel (I finally discovered that that is the channel's official name) and I saw something I haven't seen on South African news before: the weather anchor joining the news anchor to discuss the weather.

Though this may be common practice on international channels like CNN, but not on South African news.

In the case on eNCA, their weather department is located in Cape Town while the actual studio from where the anchor does the anchoring is in Johannesburg. The only time the weather anchor would actually talk about the weather outside of the weather report would be in a recorded news report about weather.

On ANN7, in the other case, the channel's only weather girl when the channel started, Suri Smit, is now doing some weekend magazine show on the channel (which has absolutely nothing to do with weather, if you wondering), meaning that the 24 hour news channel has no on air weather personality at all.

The SABC News Channel is the only local news channel that has the weather anchor doing the weather report live and, in the case of English broadcasts, in the same studio with the news anchor, which is why an informative sit down interview like today's could take place.

News On Christmas

I always wondered why CNN anchor Richard Quest always seemed to work on Christmas Day each and every year. He answered this question in a very season appropriate tweet:

I love anchoring on #Xmas the stories are lovely. The pictures are happier. Yes there is sadness and misery but for few hours we can smile
— Richard Quest (@richardquest) December 24, 2014

In South Africa, like in all other countries, the schedules of 24 hour news channels are usually tweaked quite heavily for Christmas Day as everyone tries to spend time with family, but someone still has to man the 24/7 live news operation.

For the first time, South Africa's 24 hour news channels went live at 7am instead of the usual 6am switch on.

Florence was standing in on Morning News Today for both Dan Moyane and Uveka Rangappa. This was followed by Cathy Mohlanhlana taking her usual slot. At 4pm, Xoli Mngambi was in for Duduzile Ramele on Afternoon News from 4pm and Gareth Edwards took over on Newsnight, the show that he seems to now be anchoring every Friday, from 6pm. The channel featured various taped programming throughout the day and ended the broadcast day before 11pm. Interestingly, the eNCA Moneyline and Tech Report episodes that premiered today featured mostly new content, which is to be appreciated at a time of year when all the channels, not just the news channels, do their "reflection" episodes.

On SABC News it seemed as if it was just another broadcast day, which is something that would be appreciated by someone looking for live news while everyone else was in taped content. Most of their regular anchors were either anchoring their shows, or, as in Ayanda-Allie Paine's case on Morning Live, providing live reports. Morning Live was also broadcast exclusively on the SABC News channel as SABC 2 was broadcasting festive films.

On ANN7, the channel that prides itself as being the "live events and analysis" news network of the country, they did just that:live events, with a live broadcast of a Christmas service from the Regina Mundi church in Soweto from 9am, but this was preceded by a full hour of fluffy taped programming. In Prime time, Gladys Sitholea nchored the 7pm hour which is usually ANN7 Prime but was unbranded for the evening. She was preceded by sports anchor Fahraaz Patel who did the afternoon shift of news (because these days sports anchors, reporters and entertainment anchors all get to do the news on ANN7). The channel also aired a 2hour edited version of their South African of the Year Awards that was held eariler this year.

No matter which channel you watched, the news was the same: Christmas, Christmas deaths, Christmas births, oh and a side note on the AU headquarters being attacked.

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.

Which Local News Channel Boasts The Most Popular Website?

With viewership statistics for local news channels being rare to find at best, I thought I would look at the popularity of each of the local news channels' websites, the next best metric that is actually available.

All of South Africa's three general news channels, and the two business channels, maintain their own news websites that compete nit only with each other, but also other online-only brands of news, along with social media.

So, which South African news channel has the most popular website?

5. ann7.com
In a distant fifth place, ANN7's (DStv 405) website ranks as the 11 784th most popular website in South Africa (692,277 globally).

The average visitor to the website spends only 1 minute, 59 seconds on the website, averaging 1.8 per visitor.

The website's bounce rate, which measures the percentage of visitors that leave the website after only looking at the homepage is 57.1%

Like its television counterpart, the online version of ANN7 also barely features any advertisements. But for some reason the website still feels quite cluttered and unorganised.

92% of the website's traffic originates from South Africa.


It is worth noting that ANN7's website is also by far the youngest of any of the websites listed at slightly more than a year. Even though the SABC News channel is just a few weeks older than it, SABC News has had an online platform for a long time before laucnhing the SABC News channel.

Ann7 is one of three local news sites that make their tv feed available for free at their own site.



4. businessdaytv.co.za
In fourth place is the official website of Business Day TV (DStv 412), which is the 1 487th most popular website overall in South Africa (339 606 globally).

Like Business Day TV is the tv counterpart to the nationally-distributed Business Day newspaper, bussinessdaytv.co.za is the sister of businessdayonline.co.za, the actual website of the newspaper, while businessdaytv.co.za focuses more on the television channel, including videos and a free live feed of the tv channel, along with some news, though not as extensive as Business Day Online.

Though its visitor figure is lower than most other websites on the list, its visitors are undoubtedly the most satisfied (or most dedicated), with its bounce rate of 28.6%, 8 average page views per visitor and 9:58 minutes spent online by the average visitor, all of which are much greater than any other website listed here. Their online team must be doing something right.

Its visitor percentage from South Africa is also much higher than the rest, with 99.3% of visitors originating from SA.



3. cnbcafrica.com
Though its South African rank of 1759th is worse than BDTV, the website of CNBC Africa (DStv410) ranks much higher when one looks at the global rank of 76,728th. This odd situation of being more popular internationally than domestically is due to a relatively small 34.1% of visitors from South Africa (much smaller than the rest), with the next most popular countries being Nigeria (28.1%), the US (8.4%) and Kenya (6.4%)

This mix is proof that CNBC Africa is truly a pan african news organisation and really covers news that interest people outside of South Africa (unlike other news channels that have the word "Africa" in their name but then their reporters in the Rest of Africa are doing reports on Twitter because for some reason they get so little airtime).

"cnbc live" was the second most searched for term that drove traffic to the site (and could also be why the channel is so popular in the US) as it has a live feed of the channel available for free to anyone, whereas in the US people would have to verify their pay tv subscription before being given access to the live feed. (CNBC Africa boasts quite a bit of daily live content from its international counterpart).

The channel' s bounce rate is 51.8%, daily viewers visit an average of 2.01 pages per visit and spend an average of 3:08 minutes on the website.






2. sabcnews.com

In second place is none other than the news website of the public broadcaster. Overall, it ranks as the 274th most popular website in SA (40 118 globally).

It boasts the highest bounce rate of any website on this list with 59.9%, the average visitor spends 2:14 minutes on the site, with the average visitor visiting 1.56 pages.

87.3% of visitors are from South Africa, with the US, India, the UK and Germany rounding out the top 5, respectively.

 Overall, I must say the SABC's news website is much cleaner than any other website on the list, and also quite colourful but not overdone. Whoever does the website for the organisation is doing a good job at it.

The SABC also maintains a very strong presence on Youtube and the stats listed here exclude stats for the organisation's individual channels' official websites or radio stations.



1. enca.com
It is not a surprise that the website of South Africa's most watched news channel, eNCA (DStv 403) is also the most visited website of any local news channel.

It ranks as the 247th most popular website overall in SA (29 370 globally).

The channel's bounce rate (hope you still remember what that is) is 50.1%, with the average visitor spending 3:29 minutes on the site, visiting 1.97 pages.

Since launching the website with the rebrand from eNews Channel to eNCA, the news organisation has undoubtedly put the most effort into its website in not very long of a time, and it paid off. The channel remained in its Beta phase (the time during which a wedsite or computer programme is tested and tweaked until perfect) for about a year before finally settling with its current design. When they finalised the design, they made a few slightly larger changes to the site, like expanding its Life section (Lifestyle news), in line with high traffic there.

The channel also maintains a strong presence on social media, with multiple Twitter accounts, a popular Youtube channel, popular personalities being quite active online and seamless intergration to their on televison product.

As expected, 79.1% of visitors are from South Africa, followed by the UK (where the channel ceased broadcasting recently) with 4.1% and Nigeria, india and the US rounding off the top five.

The channel is also available for live streaming at livestation.com

Not many surprises on the list, but let's see what happens in a year.
All statistics can be verified using online web measurement services like Alexa. All data is accurate as at December 2, 2014.

All local news channels cover the first anniversary of the passing of Nelson Mandela

eNCA, SABC News and ANN7 all had rolling coverage today of the first anniversary of the passing of former president Nelson Mandela.

While the 24 hour news channels devoted vast resources to cover the event, the free to air channels that usually carry major local news and 'offical events,' SABC 2 and eTV, decided not to touch their regular schedule to cover the event, opting to stick to its normal news bulletins. Not even for the 10am moment of silence did any free to air broadcaster hold their schedule to inform the nation that it is now the moment of silence.

On the news channels, all anchors anchored heir usual slots, with much more reporters on the ground at various key points. All news channels also carried the proceedings at the Union Buildings live and for the great deal in its entirety.

Cyril Ramaphosa on eNCA, ANN7 and SABC News at same time

The official programme at the Union Buildings, which were emceed by Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa ended at 12:55 with Joanne Joseph picking things up for eNCA, Abigail Visagie picked things up  at ANN7 while SABC News stayed with live visuals for a while longer. All channels went to an ad break just before one, with all regular lunchtime shows picking up at 1pm.

SABC News
On SABC news, Chriselda Lewis reported from the Centre of Remembrance this morning while Vuyo Mvoko and Matiba Mutheiwana were at Freedom Park (Side note: I must say I absolutely LOVE the way the SABC uses Mvoko only on special occasions. When he is on tv, you know something major is happening)

SABC News'Vuyo Mvoko was at Freedom Park

SABC News was the first broadcaster to break away from memorial coverage to show other news, which today included news on the SABC Chairperson and Eskom, and even sports news. Though you could say it is their responsibility as the state broadcaster to broadcast state affairs, one has to remember that the one oçlock bulletin is available to people that do not have access to a 24 hour news service and therefore it is their job to inofrm about other news as well, while eNCA instead opted to focus the entire part of their bulletin that is available to non DStv subscribers to Nelson mandela, with sports in its normal slot, leaving free to air viewers in the dark when it came to news from Eskom.

eNCA
eNCA's regular anchors did their regular slots, only with Joanne Joseph using the main side of eNCA's set and not the side where her slot is usually done from (She also looked rather nice today, I might add).
As has become tradition at eNCA with major news stories, any double anchored show will have one anchor in studio whilst the other is on location. For Morning News Today, Uveka Rangappa was in studio while Dan Moyane was at Freedom Park.
For News Day, Bhavna Singh (who I now notice does very little, if any actual reporting and interviews) was in studio while Andrew Barnes was on Robben Island.

Other reporters for the channel included Thulasizwe Simelane, who was at the Union Buildings where he was the channel's on the ground reporter at the official proceedings while Xoli Mngambi is in Qunu. Lester Kiewit was at the V & A Waterfront and social media editor, Gareth Edwards, covered the Mandela Legacy Cup, which is to be contested between the Proteas and the Springboks.
The channel also featured historical poets adding a bit of variety between all the interviews.

eNCA anchor, Dan Moyana, recorded an interview with Nelson Mandela's former personal assistant, Zelda le Grange. The interview was featured throughout the day.

ANN7
Hajra Omarjee, who tweeted that she woke up at 1am,was at Freedom Park along with Kalden Ongmu while Avumile Qongqo is in Qunu. Clement Manathela was at the Union Buildings as well.
ANN7 was the only channel to have broken out of live coverage of the proceedings at the Union Buildings for a short interview in studio, which was rather silly of them to do.

ANN7's Nzinga Qunta in studio while Paskiekar Modliar was at the wonderers and Avumile Qongqo was in Qunu.

As the day progressed, ANN7 eased into more long format reports on the life and passing of Mandela. I must say I hate these massive borders ANN7 uses.

At 4pm, SABC News and ANN7 seemed to go with 'regular' news instead, with Eskom's power outages as the main headline.

All of MNet's channels, including the Afrikaans Kyknet had the Hashtag #RememberingMadiba onscreen throughout the day, while eNCA's #RememberMandela was the number one Trending Topic in SA throughout the day.

Supersport's news channel, Supersport Blitz, aired inserts on Mandela and sports throughout the day, and had an in memorium banner intergrated into its graphics. They also re aired a documentary on Mandela throughout the day on various Supersport channels that did not have any live sports to show.