eNCA launches Moneyline podcasts

In what is a first for a South African news channel, eNCA (DStv 401) has launched a daily podcast of their Moneyline bulletin.

The  Moneyline podcasts, which are freely available for streaming on their site, are essentially the daily Moneyline broadcasts, which premieres weekdays at 8:30pm on the channel, with the commercial breaks removed, so you can listen to the show in twenty two minutes as opposed to watching it in 30.

Unlike most podcasts, like those on CliffCentral, the Moneyline podcasts are interestingly not available for download and later consumption, so a live internet connection would always be needed.

The launch of the Moneyline podcast follows just a few months after eNCA launched eNews Direct on etv and made those news bulletins available in full and for free on their Yourtube channel.

http://www.enca.com/money/listen-moneyline-podcasts

eNCA Tweaks Schedule: News Night Shortened, Money Line Earlier

eNCA, South Africa's most watched news channel, has tweaked its late prime time schedule.

Its long running 3 hour flagship broadcast, News Night, which is anchored by Iman Rappetti and Jeremy Maggs, loses its last half hour and is now only 2 and a half hours per evening.

Moneyline, the finance and business news show hosted by Siki Mgabadeli and Arabile Gumede now moves up half an hour to the 8:30pm slot with a general news bulletin now airing in its former 9pm slot.

The move sees eNCA finally breaking the full hour of non news content that aired in the 9pm hour (Moneyline followed by a magazine show), the longest period of time outside of late nights that the channel does not have any actual news on.

It also means that eNCA's late prime time and late night schedule is more simplified: news at the top of every hour, non news at the bottom.

Trudi Makhaya Joins eNCA

Micro Economist Trudi Makhaya has joined eNCA, DStv 403, and enca.com.

At enca.com, she will, or has already started, writing articles primarily based on the economy, of course, covering things like unemployment and international trade.

She will appear on eNCA as a commentator in the same manner as the excellent Angelo Fick does, providing expert analysis in her field of specialisation. Just speculation here, but I am sure she will be appearing quite frequently on Siki Magabadeli's new business-centric show that launches October 1st.

Articles written by Trudi has appeared in various academic publications and also commerce newspaper, Business Day, which she was a part of up to July earlier this year. Trudi also previously served as the Deputy Competition Commissioner.

Siki Mgabadeli to Host New Daily Business Show on eNCA

Former CNBC Africa and SAfm anchor, Siki Mgabadeli is set to begin hosting a new daily business show to launch on eNCA (DStv 403, SKY 517), South Africa's most watched news channel, on October 1st 2014.

The show, airing at 9pm Monday to Friday for 30 minutes will be hosted by Siki from Monday to Thursday with current eNCA business anchor, Arabile Gumede (himself a former CNBC Africa personality) at the healm of the show on a Friday.

Along with hosting the new show, Siki now also takes on the role of senior business anchor, which is a snub to Gumede who has been with the channel since December 2013 doing business news as part of News Night.

Siki is, of course, no stranger to eNCA audiences. She anchored the channel's election day coverage earlier this year from 12pm-6pm, hosted the Big Debate that jumped from the SABC to eNCA, and also frequently appears on air as part of cross overs eNCA has with the radio station she is currently with, Power FM, during events like the State of the Nation Address or the Opening of Parliament.

The only problem I have with the new program is its timeslot. It airs 2.5 hurs after SABC News' business show with Francis Herd has ended, BDTV and CNBC Africa's decent primetime business schedule has begun to draw to a close and Tirrin Cossaway has done indepth business reports on ANN7 Prime.

But eNCA is doing their best to make sure that the new program will still be appointment viewing to the business audience. They are doing this by basically removing all the interviews and in depth analysis from Arabile Gumede's business news inserts on Afternoon News and Newsnight and adding them to this show to ensure that it is not old news to the eNCA audience. This will then lead to the problem that Gumede's inserts on Newsnight and Afternoon News will be very vanilla considering the channel now no longer want to give the big business news stories away in those slots, which is a mistake on the part of the channel.

The 9pm slot is als a slot that eNCA has traditionally avoided to program anything but general news bulletins in. The reason for this is that at 9:30pm the channel has shows like The Tech Report and Late Night News with Loyiso Gola, which is basically non-"real" news for 30 minutes before another general news bulletin at the top of the hour. Adding a daily business bulletin at 9pm means that viewers would have to wait a full hour before having another proper news bulletin on eNCA.

Not only does it mean a full hour without news on eNCA, but it also means that in the 9pm hour there would be no english South African news on, well, any South African news channel as SABC News runs stale non-live African language news in that hour and ANN7 has an old I Am South African in that hour.

Other than the timing of the new business bulletin, which is yet to receive an official name, this is an interesting move by a news channel that has generally avoided niche news bulletins.

Election Coverage Review: eNCA

Courtesy of Patrick Conroy's Twitter

Of all three news channels we have, eNCA undoubtedly had the least sensational coverage (not necessarily bad).

Uveka Rangappa, who anchored from 6am to 12pm on election day got to cover all the bigger politicians in the country  voting. Here, she is covering President Zuma voting from his hometown in Nkandla.

Whilst the other channels broadcast primarily from the IEC Election Centre (and in ANN7's case, a decent amount from the studion), eNCA decided to stick with their broadcast originating from their Hyde Park studios, away from the hustle and bustle that goes along with being able to broadcast from the IEC Centre. This was in contrast to the atmosphere created on the other channels.

Gareth Edwards at the big screen from which he did most of his presentations for an extended period of Election day. The screen was controlled by him using the two iPads seen on the desk in front of him.

They also went with the format of their previous election coverage of having the main studio anchor anchoring a WHOPPING SIX HOURS of coverage on end. This started off with Uveka Rangappa from 6am to 12pm, Siki Mgabadeli(see paragraph below) taking over from her until 6pm, Joanne Joseph taking us to midnight while the team of eNCA Africa Edition co-anchored the overnight hours on Wednesday evening until 6am when Uveka was back (Do not judge me for not knowing their names. Not even Joanne Jospehs knew their names as she just said at the top of the hour "the next team" takes over whereas prior to this every anchor would actually give the name of who would follow them). Gareth Edwards was at the touch screen for most of the day from about 6am until nearly six pm, spending most of his birthday providing live analysis on the numbers around the election

Siki Mgabadeli anchored the channel's afternoon coverage.

I am very disappointed that the channel had Siki Mgabadeli anchor six hours of the coverage, considering that she is not even an anchor at the channel. Elections are a time to showcase your best anchors and reporters so that the casual viewers who tune in for a big event like elections could potentially be enticed into tuning in again after the news fades. Instead of doing this, the channel decided to showcase the presenter of a seasonal one hour per week show, The Big Debate (which we can now almost certainly guarantee will be back for a new season ) for a full six hours. I also do not see how her presenting that show justifies her getting the slot ahead of the likes of young talent like Gareth Edwards, who had to play second fiddle to her, as she is primarily a business anchor, having had experiences at channels like CNBC Africa and Summit TV. Her first half an hour was not the best news reading, to say the least, the next half hour Gareth played a bigger role and from there she took over the driving seat becoming better in the space of the long six hour afternoon shift she carried, admittedly.

News Night anchors Iman Rappetti and Jeremy Maggs presented coverage from the IEC Results Centre. Courtesy: Iman Rappetti's Twitter

I must say I admired the channels "All hands on deck" approach when it came to having reporters literally stationed around the country. Late night, weekend and fill in anchor Fenly Foxen was used as a reporter, along with eNews Late Edition and weekend edition hosts Robyn Smith and Amy McIver were used as reporters as well, Robyn from the Northern Cape and Amy as an exceptional interviewer at the IEC Centre (she should really take on the role more often). All senior anchors (Jeremy Maggs, Dan Moyane and Iman Rappetti) anchored short panel sessions from the IEC Centre. eNCA was the only channel that used their "studio" at the IEC  Centre as "soft segments" (segments done from a couch).

The channel had reporters at all of the IEC's provincial centres

The channel carried a special edition of Late Night News with the brilliant Loyiso Gola at 9:30pm, which I am not sure was a smart move as this was just thirty minutes after polls officially closed and thus there must have been a large amount of live crossings that could have been done in that slot.

JoAnne Jospeh along with analysts Angelo Fick and Justice Malala carried the channels Election Day coverage from 6pm to midnight

Their graphics for the election results which started appearing at 9pm were just the right size, not too small or too big and distracting (like ANN's). As results started to trickle in Joanne Joseph kept consulting with her brilliant panel of Angelo Fick (who is now a permanent member of the eNCA team) and Justice Malala, who all were great initially, started fading as time ticked by. What do you expect if you going to be speaking to the same two people for six hours?

Post midnight, the first major interview the channel got was with with DA leader Hellen Zille who spoke to now midmorning anchor CathyMohlahlana from the IEC Election Centre.

Overall, this was amazing coverage, but could have presented more excitingly.