Nzinga Qunta joins SABC News Channel

Former ANN7 Prime anchor, Nzinga Qunta is back on our screens in a regular role, now anchoring the SABC News Channel's Midday Report and, by consequence (due to simulcasting), SABC3's News at 1.


She has been in the role since the middle of February but I have only recently been able to confirm the move is not a temporary arrangement.

Since leaving ANN7 back in June 2015, Qunta has become a mother and planned to be a stay at home mom, but as she tweeted today, the news bug bit and she could not resist a return to screens (@NzingaQ: I was but I missed news and life changes 😬).

Nzinga brings SABC News an asset very few other on-air personalities on any news channel have: the ability to organically connect with younger people on social media and cleverly try to convert these tweets to viewers. She engages with her over 26 000 Twitter followers as if she is just another one of them and not some news person just delivering the same news in the same way just on another platform.

Though the 1pm hour is business centric, having such a strong social media user anchoring during the afternoon is an added benefit during hours when the things trending online usually is a direct result of live broadcasts happening during these hours (Parliamentary sessions, press conferences, court proceedings, etc).

Qunta is also a former Channel O presenter, presenting the channel's then flagship show, O-boma from 2007 to 2009 (Remember that show? It feels like a real lifetime ago).  She holds a BA degree from Wits in English Literature and Law.

SABC News refreshes lower thirds

When election  season comes around, news channels usually refresh their onscreen appearance as the race for ratings heats up. This week, the SABC News Channel, along with the SABC's news bulletins across the entity's free to air channels.

The group joins the latest flat and colourful craze, just like eNCA does, in its new on screen presentation. Also new are the info screens used to display the financial stats.

The titles remain unchanged whilst the colour of the credits has changed.

SABC launches local government elections show

[Forgive me for not posting about this sooner]

Along with shifting news bulletins around and new show launches, the 4th of July also saw the launch of the SABC's traditional election build up show.

'Election 2016,' as it is referred to, is a daily 30 minute election news roundup and daily topic analysis anchored by Morning Live's Leanne Manas, who is joined by Simphiwe Ncongwane. These two are joined on set by Thabiso Sithole who tends to do the in depth interviews. It airs from 6pm on both SABC2 (in the former slot of the multilingual news bulletin) and SABC News Channel (in place of the first half hour of Prime Time News). In addition, it repeats at midnight on both channels and is also uploaded onto SABC News' Youtube channel.

The show is broadcast live from the new studio that was launched for the rugby world cup last year. At the time, I said it may not be the best sports studio in the country (nothing comes close to what is done at Supersport), but it is by far the best studio among the news broadcasters.

The show also encourages viewer interaction by asking viewers to tweet a reply to their daily question using the hashtag #SABCElection2016.

The first segment of the show follows the format of a general news bulletin, but with an election focus, followed by an in depth piece and discussion about a specific topic in the second segment. This is then followed by a minute of members of the public answering a question about the elections. The final segment starts with an SABC Election tradition of giving a smaller party a minute to sell themselves to the public.

The show joins ANN7's SA Decides as so far the only two daily dedicated election news bulletins in the country.

The SABC bans the reading of newspaper headlines on the air

Yet another sweeping change affecting the SABC has been announced earlier today with COO, Hlaudi Motsoeneng, announcing that the broadcaster will no longer be reading newspaper headlines on the air, on tv or radio.

The reason? Apparently reading newspaper headlines, which is a practice done by many news broadcasters around the world, gives the newspapers free advertising and if the newspapers want exposure on the SABC, they will have to pay for it.

The problem is that many programs like Morning Live on SABC2 have the daily reading of the newspaper headlines on air to give viewers a sense of what is happening in the country and around the world from different editorial perspectives.

Worse than that, the SABC has a weekly media news show, Media Monitor, on the SABC News Channel whose entire objective it is to report on what the press at large are reporting and how they are doing it. How do you report what was reported at a newspaper if you, well, can't say what was reported. Will make for some interesting, and probably cringe worthy, viewing this coming Sunday.

The move has since been met with uproar, with the Democratic Alliance calling it yet another move to protect the ANC.

President Zuma addresses the nation to apologise

Last night, s Friday night, President Zuma decided he wanted to address the nation on the Constitutional Court ruling that was announced this past week.

Many thought he would be announcing something larger than that (to be exact, his resignation), which caused the major broadcasters to scramble to provide adequate coverage for his potentially blockbuster address.

etv felt the need to push the channel's entire prime time schedule back by at least 30 minutes in order to cover the address, which means they really thought something major was going to happen as their two biggest tv shows (Rhythm City and Scandal) were pushed aside for the president. Interestingly, the channel decided to simulcast eNCA's coverage of the address instead of just extending Duduzile Ramela's eNews Direct bulletin, which was on air until 7pm and was created with the intention of covering major events as they happen.

The SABC kept disruptions on their free to air channels to a minimum. SABC3's schedule went on uninterrupted whilst the ongoing Afrikaans and Zulu news bulletins were going to cover the event during their standard 7pm broadcasts, which were extended to 7:32pm to cover the entire event.
History was also made as this was now the first major event covered by the SABC to not be anchored in the English language on the broadcaster's free to air platform. The only program on the SABC's schedule that was affected by the address was Noot vir Noot on SABC 2 which was completely preempted to broadcast the ANC's press conference.

Peter Ndoro and Vabakshnee Chetty anchored coverage on the SABC News Channel.

ANN7 seemed to have sent their staff home early, or given them the day off and the unexpected address really once again showed the channel's lack of talent. The recently appointed ANN7 Prime anchor, Sindy Mabe, was not in studio today which meant some inexperienced anchor had to do the job of covering a presidential address, which is not easy to do considering the amount of ad libbing required (and teleprompter reading, apparently). The channel's panel experts were not in studio, with analysis being provided purely by phone. In other words, ANN7 would do quite well as a radio station. They had the excellent Assignments Editor, Cecilia Russel, as the first analyst, followed by editor in chief, Moegsien Williams. They also had a political expert, all three by phone. Add to this the fact that the coverage was done from the couch. A presidential address, covered from the couch.

eNCA once again went all out with providing coverage of the address. They had Karyn Maughn, Xoli Mngambi, Angelo Fick and Justice Malala all in studio providing analysis. Later in the evening when Gwede Mantashe addressed the media, he was actually looking for Mngambi as he said Mngambi had camped out at the ANC's offices the prior evening believing the address would be held then.
Following Zuma's address, eNCA interviewed main opposition leader, Mmusi Maimane, by telephone to get his reaction to the president's remarks.

'On the Record with Vuyo Mvoko' abruptly cancelled

Late last week the SABC News Channel abruptly cancelled their daily in depth news programme, On the Record with Vuyo Mvoko, after just under three months.


The City Press is reporting that the reason for the cancellation is that Mvoko, who is also a contributing editor at the SABC, planned to discuss the state capture by the Gupta family on the show. This then led to disagreements between Mvoko and the higher ups at the SABC which has now led to the cancellation of the show.

Mvoko also planned to interview  Deputy Finance Minister Mcebisi Jonas, who said he was offered the role of Fiance Minister by the Gupta family, on the show.

This move is just another that is bringing to light the SABC's apparent policy to not broadcast anything critical of the President or the ANC.

On the cancellation, Mvoko tweeted, "#OnTheRecord on #sabcnews tonight. #OTR_404 is no more. Thanks 4 support. Apologies for abrupt end." Since the tweet, many have expressed disappointment in the move, including the Public Protector, who tweeted the following in reply, "@PublicProtector Team is saddened by the news. We trust the canning of #OTR_404 is not due to improper motives."

The SABC News Channel schedule will go back to what it was before On The Record started, airing a three hour Your World from 9pm.

Ayanda-Allie Paine Leaves SABC and Morning Live for PowerFM

Morning Live's (SABC News Channel 6am) news reader, Ayanda-Allie Paine will be leaving the breakfast show at the end of the month.

She will be leaving the SABC's flagship breakfast show, which averages over a million viewers daily throughout the country, for Gauteng's PowerFM, which is now a serious contender when it comes to attracting top notch broadcast journalists.

Prior to joining the SABC, Ayanda-Allie was a news anchor at eNCA, where she was initially a weekend anchor (one Saturday she fell asleep behind the desk, something that has become infamous) and then anchor of the channel's daily breakfast show, Morning News Today. 

Then, in August 2013, Ayanda jumped from eNCA to the newly launched SABC News Channel, where she was the newsreader of Morning Live. At the time, she attributed the jump to the fact that Morning Live is seen in way more homes than Morning News Today (Morning Live is available on the second most distributed channel in the country, SABC2) and this would allow her personal brand to be elevated to levels where she can make a greater social impact through more people being aware of her (seriously. No jokes).

Other than Morning Live, Ayanda also had many other opportunities at the SABC. She anchored the channel's coverage of the State of the Nation Address, which she probably would not get to do at eNCA, and also hosted the popular Crown Gospel Awards [At the time, the searc term 'who was presenter of crown gospel awards' drove a lot of traffic to this site]. In addition to that, she also hosted a prime time chat show, Visionaries Lounge on SABC2.

Now Ayanda will be embarking on a new journey to PowerFM where she will be hosting (do you call the hosts of a news radio station DJ's or anchors?) the breakfast show, Power Breakfast, with cohost, Lawrence Tlhabane.

So far, a replacement for Paine on Morning Live is yet to be announced.

[The name is 'Ayanda-Allie Paine,' not 'Ayanda Allie-Paine.' She said she chose this name because she doesn't want her children to have double barrel surnames but she also did not want to leave behind the rich lineage of the Allie name]

SABC News Channel launches 'On The Record' with Vuyo Mvoko

"And a very warm welcome to the very first episode of our new show, On the Record." Those were the first words of SABC News' Contributing Editor, Vuyo Mvoko, welcoming viewers to his new show this past Monday night, January 11th.

On The Record aims to go beyond the day's headlines to bring viewers a select few stories that viewers simply have to know, debates, as well as interviews and profiles with people viewers ought to know.

The show has a decent format: start with a few news stories with Mvoko drawing a narrative in between links as well as providing commentary, none of which seems to be scrolling on a teleprompter. Not being a traditional news bulletin, the program has the luxury to linger longer on certain news stories, creating insight viewers would otherwise not have received during a regular bulletin.

After the first segment details the main news story of the day, the second segment features the show's focus story of the day, which is something discussed in with on air guests. The premiere episode featured a simply explosive debate around the recent race issues experienced in the country. It featured author, Eusebius McKaizer (Run, Racist, Run), rights activist, Ernst Roets (Afriforum)as well as Andile Mgxithama (Black First, Land First).

Following the lengthy debate, the premiere episode aired an interview with the current ANC Youth League President.

With the launch of On The Record, Your World gets cut down to only two hours, starting now at 10pm. Both shows use the same studio though.

The show is also not Mvoko's first attempt at a show on the channel as he has previously experimented with different formats in the past.

One The Record with anchor Vuyo Mvoko airs weekdays from 9pm to 10pm on SABC News Channel (DStv 404).

SABC2 Dumps Deutsche Welle From Overnights, Opting For SABC News Channel Simulcast Instead

In December 2014, SABC 2 added Deutsche Welle, the German public broadcaster's news service, to its overnight schedule to replace the stale reruns of old SABC News shows that occupied SABC2's graveyard hours before then.

Now, a year later, Deutsche Welle is gone from the SABC2 schedule with SABC2 now opting to simulcast the feed of the SABC News Channel overnight instead.

This means that South African's who do not have DStv now get to see the full flagship bulletin of the public broadcaster's main news bulletin, Prime Time News, in full from midnight (i.e. six hours old news) with Your World following thereafter.

I am surprised this move did not come sooner, actually. Remember when the SABC controversially decided to not renew Siki Mgabadeli's Big Debate programme (which has since moved to eTV)? The reason for the cancellation was that the SABC did not show any news programming that was not under their editorial control. Yet with Deutsche Welle they turned over a five and a half hour block of programming to a germain news broadcaster.

Overall, this is a step in the right direction in providing ordinary South Africans without pay tv access to more in depth news programming originating domestically.

eNCA, SABC News Broadcast Vans Damaged During Protests at Union Buildings

As Fees Must Fall protests at the Union Building became violent today, Outside Broadcast Vans of both eNCA and SABC News were damaged and reporters caught between police and protesters.

The eNCA camera used by Iman Rappetti was also damaged, with its lens being cracked as it continued to provide live pictures to viewers. Throughout the day, Iman and her cameraman have consistently had close calls when rocks were thrown by protestors, with the cameraman being hit.

One SAC news team on the scene felt the situation for them had become too dangerous as threats had been made directly to them, choosing to move away from the Union Buildings and reports from a safe distance.Reporters , like Chriselda Lewis, have found themselves running for cover from not only rocks from students, but teargas as well.

Though no ANN7 team had been threatened physically, the channel drew criticism on social media when they became the only news organisation to link today's violence to the EFF, with Tweeters saying that this is a result of the ANN7-Gupta connection.
 

The SABC News Channel [Finally] Rolls Out Its New Schedule

The SABC News Channel has finally last week rolled out its new schedule structure, hinted at round about Easter this year then being postponed regularly.

With it comes, firstly and most controversially, the dropping of all the repeats of the local language bulletins that was seen on the channel late at night. This means that the SABC now too becomes another 24 hour news channel that broadcasts fully in Enlgish in a country with 11 official languages.

Also done away with are the one hour news bulletins like Newsroom with Eben Jansen. In its place are now bulletins that run for 3 hours on end:
Morning Live remains unchanged from 6am to 9am.

Newsroom is now a 3 hour brodcast from 9am, with Eben Jansen now no longer at the helm.

The 1pm business centric bulletin now gets absorbed into a 3 hour block called Midday Report, starting at 12pm.

At 3pm, News Today replaces what was previously PM News, though is basically the same format.

Question time remains unchanged at 5:30pm.

Though the tv guide says that Prime Time News is now 3 hours long from 6pm, Business Review with Francis Herd remains in the 6pm slot with Sports Live at 8:30pm.

Mahendra Raghunath returns to Your World, now live from 9pm to midnight, meaning that the SABC news channel has now gone from being the local news channel that went off air first at night to be being the channel that is still live the latest. More live news is never a bad thing.

This also means that the SABC News channel now trumps both ANN7 and eNCA in the shear amount of live news seen on the channel.

The channel has also reworked basically all of their weeked magazine shows, adding new ones, cutting others and now also showing repeats of Special Assignment nearly a week after it airs on SABC3.

SABC News Channel Covers EFF Second Anniversary Live

The SABC News Channel (DStv 404) was the only 24 hour South African news channel to provide rolling coverage of the EFF's 2nd Anniversary celebrations.

The event was broadcast live from 2pm to 5:30pm. The channel had contributing editor Vuyo Mvoko as anchor.

The broadcast was also carried live for a shorter period of time on the more widely distributed SABC2. The portion broadcast on the free to air channel included EFF leader, Julius Malema's speech.

Though the event was not broadcast live on eNCA, who had their regularly scheduled programming, it was streamed live on Youtube and their website, enca.com.

Julius Malema's speech was carried live on ANN7 as well.

The event was also the top trending topic on Twitter for Saturday afternoon.

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.

eNCA Hosts Guest Youth Anchors For Youth Day

Jeremy Maggs and his Youth Day co anchor anchoring News Night

All the South African news channels provided special coverage for this past week's Youth Day commemorations.

SABC News Channel simulcasted SABC1's special Youth Day broadcast (which was produced by SABC News) and anchored by SABC News' younger reporters, who did a good job at covering all the events happening concurrently which included interviews with other young people and in studio debates. It also included special reports on relevent topics by reporters like the excellent Chriselda Lewis.

ANN7's cameras were everywhere where major Youth Day commemorations were being held in addition to small information pieces that aired throughout the day. ANN7 boasts the youngest overall anchor lineup of all the local channels: youngest anchor (Chante Jantjies, Weekend Vuka Africa anchor), youngest breakfast show anchor (Abigail Visagie, Vuka Africa) and youngest prime time anchor (Nzinga Qunta, ANN7 Prime).

But my personal favourite has to be eNCA. In addition to the usual live coverage and in studio debates that the others had, eNCA decided to do something less gloomy than to mention things like high youth unemployment, they had school children as co anchors throughout the channel's programming.

Though the school children seemed a bit nervous (though they were quite far from being as bad as those people ANN7 unleashed on us when they launched), it was an experience they would never forget. They got to read and introduce stories, have a bit of banter with the 'senior' anchor, got to interview guests and themselves also got answer relevant questions.

Njabulo Moyo, Duduzile Ramile's co anchor for Youth Day, presented the idea that eNCA have youth anchors co anchor their Youth Day coverage, an idea thatthe channel took up.

SABC Newsroom Guest Smokes Marujuana During On Air Interview

The formula for the SABC Newsroom show on the SABC News Channel at 9am is very simple: a technologically driven news bulletin simulcast on Youtube and engaging with viewers on social media. It is that simple. Well at least on paper.

But the bulletin just seems to court controversy more than any other bulletin on the SABC News Channel.

Today, May 11th SABC Newsroom guest, Andre du Plessis, decided he was going to start smoking marujuana, an illegal substance in South Africa, live on a national broadcast platform that is owned by the government of South Africa.

Just last month the actual anchor of Newsroom, Eben Jansen, was suspended for his conduct during an interview with a member of the EFF.

The strange part of the marujuana incident is that the SABC actually posted a clip of the incident on their Youtube page (something they did not have to do as it just draws attention to the situation and considering the whole bulletin is uploaded to Youtube in any case) with the description/statement , "The SABC Broadcaster and the SABC Newsroom does not condone the actions of our guest Andre Duplessis. The views expressed in this video clip/ interview are not that of the SABC and Associates, but that of the guest."

What makes thing even weirder, so to say is that there seems to be cheering du Plessis from whoever is behind the camera in the Cape town studio where he was for the interview, as pointed out by one of the people who have commented on the video.

The incident also caused the term "Dagga" to trend on twitter earlier today.

ALL News Channels Cover the DA's Federal Congress

As one would expect, each of South Africa's24 hour news channels covered the election of Mmusi Maimane as the new leader of official opposition, the Democratic Alliance.

eNCA's coverage was anchored by Cathy Mohlahlana in Johannesburg, who was joined in studio by eNCA Commentator, Angelo Fick, who has been providing analysis all weekend long already. Joanne Josephs anchored things from Port Elizabeth. After Maimane's inaugurate address, eNCA was the first to interview him immediately after.

ANN7's coverage of the event was anchored by Vuka Afrka anchor, Peter van Onselen in their studio. Reporter, Ken Brandt was on the ground for the channel.
 
While eNCA had the first interview with the newly elected Mmusi Maimane, SABC News Channel (which was simulcast on SABC2) had the first interview with out going DA leader, Helen Zille. Though the interview had what one would expect about the transition of power in the DA, the crux of the interview came down to Allistair Sparks' controversial comment when he mentioned Apartheid architect, Hendrik Verwoed as one of the 'smartest politicians' he knew. One comment from Zille that stood out in this damage control interview was "Evil people are not necessarily stupid people" and that was, as she termed it, 'scary.' The interview was conducted by the SABC's anchor for the day, contributing editor, Vuyo Mvoko, who was also in Port Elizabeth

SABC News Takes Eben Jansen Off Air Indefinitely Following Controversial Interview

The SABC has pulled anchor Eben Jansen from the air following his controversial interview with EFF Spokesperson Mbuyiseni Ndlozi over the statue uprising currently taking place in South Africa.

The interview has gone viral since Thursday morning when it took place, being covered by many major news organisations and also led to 'Eben Jansen' becoming a Top Ten trending topic on Twittr for a great portion of Thursday.

The first minute or so of the interview goes smoothly, but things go downhill  quickly when Jansen asks Ndlozi about colonists that have historically gone to places and wiped away the history of the people native to whatever region was colonised and what made the current statue revolution different from those events. Ndlozi responded that the question was fundamentally wrong, which it was, and then Eben gets very defensive, interrupting his guest multiple times, raising his voice and depriving the viewers of hearing what could have been a very interesting opinion on the statue revolution.

Ndlozi is then rudely cut off.

On his removal from the air, SABC spokesperson, Kaizer Kganyago, said,“We were unhappy with what happened and have taken Eben off air. He will be off air until the matter has been dealt with between us and him.”

The really unlucky part of the whole situation, from a PR perspective for the SABC at least, is that out of all the news bulletins it airs across its array of channels including the 24 hour news channel, SABC News Channel, SABC 1, 2 and 3, Newsroom with Eben Jansen is the only programme that gets uploaded in its entirety onto Youtube, which likely caused the interview that took place in the morning, when most people are doing other things other than watching news, to go viral.An average episode of Newsroom with Eben Jansen typically gets about 300 views on Youtube but the edition featuring the interview has already been watched over 120 000 times (and has more down votes than up votes).