Election day broadcast plans: ANN7

ANN7, along with the other domestic news channels, will be going with wall-to-wall election coverage.

On election day (August 3rd), the channel's entire broadcast day will be branded as 'SA Decides,' which is the name of the channel's running election programme.

As has been the focus of SA Decides, the channel's focus will continue to be on on the ground reporting, with the nine regioinal SA Decides teams all being deployed to each province's respective Regional Results Center.

In addition, the channel's main anchoring will be broadcast from their usual studio in Midrand as well as the main results center in Pretoria. Because South Africa still takes a while to count votes, the channel will continue coverage from this center for the rest of the week as well.

The channel will also be live overnight on Wednesday. The usual anchors will anchor extended hours with Sindy Mabe doing her first ever prime time election night coverage.

ANN7 is available on all DStv bouquets on channel 405, streamed live at ann7com

Stevie B no longer with ANN7

ANN7's business news anchor and anchor of BizSense, Stevie B, is no longer with ANN7.

He started anchoring at ANN7 on the last Monday of November last year and aimed to have a business show targeted to regular South Africans.

At the start of this month, Kaya FM announced that Stevie (real name Steven Bacher) would be leaving the station as he needed a new challenge after twelve years. For now, he has joined MixFM in Joburg and plans to launch his own radio station in the next ten years.

For now, ANN7 Prime anchor, Sindy Mabe, will continue to anchor BizSense, which airs immediately after ANN7 Prime at 8pm until a permanent replacement is found.

Sindy Mabe starts early

Though Sindy Mabe's now well covered move to ANN7 was announced for this coming Monday, the anchor started early by anchoring most of the 3pm hour on the channel today.

What is traditionally a normal news bulletin anchored by Karabo Yibe, was instead a debate anchored by Mabe, identical to the type of debate she will be chairing come Monday when she takes over ANN7 Prime.

The hour was still branded on air as Newspoint, though.

The topic of the hour? None other than the Guptas' controversial ownership of ANN7 and its sister newpaper, The New Age, and a report the two entities released about the ANC apparently gtting ready to recall President Zuma. This is something Mabe will have to defend on a regular basis should the Guptas continue to stay in the spotlight.

Today alone, in defense of the Guptas, Mabe cited the positive influence the Guptas had on the country, which includes an amount invested in the economy apparently exceeding R10 billion and that over R200 million of taxes are generated by Gupta employment. The whole defense came across as awkward.

The whole hour was probably just a test hour for Mabe to get used to the setup and ANN7. I must say she is very good at what she does. It was not her being on tv that drew my attention but rather me wanting to see who this anchor is that is doing quite a good job on a channel that generally has bland anchors. ANN7 Prime is in good hands. But for how long? We'll see.

The interest generated by Mabe joining ANN7 in the media has been quite sizable considering how silent these things usually are for the channel. They seem to have a proper PR/marketing division now sending out releases on these kind of things while they even have a Twitter accoun dedicated to marketing the channel.

ANN7 announced that broadcast veteran, Sindy Mabe, will be joining the channel as the new anchor of their flagship news programme, ANN7 Prime.

She will be replacing Peter van Onselen, who vacates the position after just under three months. Prior to that, Sebenzile Nkambule held down the fort, and prior to that was a whole slew of different anchors and formats for a prime time news bulletin that just does not seem to find any consistency.

Sindy now joins a long list of former eTV personalities that have anchored ANN7 Prime: Chantal Rutter-Dros, Juliet Newell and Peter van Onselen all have eTV listed on their CV's before ANN7. At eTV, Sindy anchored the channel's breakfast show, Sunrise

Though this is not the first time the channel has turned to an outsider to anchor its prime time bulletin after its anchor left, it does highlight that ANN7 has not yet been able to groom an anchor in house for the position, especially considering how much they pride themselves on being the place where young journalists can get a start in the in
Sindy Mabe anchors ANN7's (DStv 405) Prime bulletin, which airs weekdays between 7pm and 9pm from this coming Monday, 21 March 2016. [Strange date, you never want a major event on a tv show happening on a public holiday when viewership is traditionally low]