Motheo Khoaripe named new eNCA prime time business anchor

eNCA this past week finally announced a new prime-time business anchor, months after Arabile Gumede left.Motheo Khoaripe will take up this position once the election season dies down.

Khoaripe's appointment marks the first time the channel has promoted someone from within its ranks to the prime time business anchor role. He has been producing and reporting for the channel since late 2014, doing mainly financial stories, most prominently for Moneyline.

Prior to joining eNCA the University of Johannesburg graduate reported for the Kasi Times.

Among his duties as anchor, Khoaripe will anchor the business segments during News Night and Afternoon News and also fill in as anchor on Moneyline. In addition, he will continue reporting on major financial stories.

eNCA expands its online audio offering greatly

The country's most watched news channel, eNCA (DStv 403), continues to expand its ever growing online presence. This time, they have heavily grown their podcast offering beyond just the recently launched Moneyline podcasts.

eNCA Radio
The first in the series that was launched is eNCA Radio, which is very similar in structure to a news bulletin that broadcasts at the top and bottom of the hour on many radio stations. The newsreader on the podcast is eNCA's Deputy Online Editor, Lynne O'Connor, who prior to joining eNCA was a news anchor at radio news brand, Eyewitness News.
The approximately three and a half minute bulletin is also downloadable, with a size slightly less than a megabyte, perfect for on the go consumption.
eNCA Radio is uploaded weekday mornings.

Amabookabooka
Relatively long running podcast, Amabookabooka, now joins eNCA's podcast offering. Not much has changed now that it has made the jump from iTunes to eNCA, still focussing on books and their authors.

Judge for Yourself
Like the Moneyline podcasts, Judge for Yourself is just the audio version of the television show, with the commercial breaks removed.

All in all, it seems like eNCA is now a fully fledged competitor in the podcast environment. Lets see where it goes from here

Arabile Gumede leaving eNCA for Bloomberg

eNCA's prime time business news anchor, Arabile Gumede, will be leaving the domestic news channel at the end of May.

Gumede joined eNCA from CNBC Africa in 2013 to fill the void left by Francis Herd who jumped ship to the then new SABC news Channel (DStv 404). He holds a BComm Accounting degree from the University of Johannesburg.

At eNCA, Gumede primarily anchored the business news segments on the prime time News Night (and by virtue, the business news segments on the second hour of Afternoon News). In 2014 he became the Friday anchor, and fill in anchor, of the channel's first daily dedicated business news programme, Moneyline. On days when major economic stories broke, like rate announcements, Gumede would provide live coverage from the reserve bank and also file reports that aired throughout the day on eNCA and etv's news bulletins.

Since joining eNCA, Gumede has built up quite the following on social networks, providing financial news and advice to his over 12 000 Twitter followers, including his savings plan at the beginning of the year where you start by saving R10 a week then increasing from there (or the other way round), something that gained quite a bit of traction of the social network. In fact, Gumede has something most in tv news do not: naturally fitting in on the 'cool' Twitter where younger, more trendy people are in his social circle, something newsers by default have a hard time reaching.

He is taking a big gamble by jumping to Bloomberg. In 2013, Eleni Giokos too made the jump from eNCA to Bloomberg (under its then new division, Bloomberg TV Africa). However, not too long after that, the entire division was shut and Eleni found herself freelancing in South Africa before being picked up by CNN last year.

A replacement for Gumede has not been announced yet. He leaves behind Siki Mgabadeli who is eNCA's Senior Business Anchor (though she is not really seen that much outside of Moneyline).

Gumede leaves eNCA at the end of May.

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.

eNCA Adds New Show, Week In One, to Schedule

eNCA, DStv 403, has added yet another new show to the channel's growing number of speciality news programming. The latest edition is News in One.

News in One is a new show that debuted earlier today, October 4th 2014, with little prior promotion or fanfare. News in One is to be a weekly show reviewing the week's top news stories in one thirty minute bulletin.

The show is hosted by eNCA senior anchor (and now Power FM presenter as well), Jeremy Maggs. It now means that Jeremy Maggs will be seen on our screens seven days a week: Monday-Friday on Newsnight, Sunday on Maggs on Media and now Saturdays as well on Week in One.

Week in One is the second new show to debut on the channel this week. eNCA Moneyline premiered on Wednesday evening with Siki Mgadabeli at the helm. That show received much better promotion leading up to its launch in comparison to the silent launch of Week in One.

The weekly premiere is on a Saturday morning at 10am and then repeats a whopping 4 additional times over both Saturday and Sunday as eNCA continues their cutting back of live news for reasons unknown.

The channel, whose slogan once upon a time was "Prime Time, All The Time" now no longer has just ONE full hour of news on the channel on a weekend day as eNCA now has a mere 7.5 hours of live news on a Saturday.

eNCA Cutting Back on After Prime Time News

(Article intended to have "Late Night" instead of "After Prime Time" in its title, but unfortunately that would then be a name of another show on the channel)

From the first of October 2014, how many hours of live news would you expect to find on eNCA between 9pm and 6am? Answer: only one.

Yes, South Africa's most watched news channel will only have one hour of live news after Newsnight ends at 9pm.

This is partially because of the introduction of eNCA Moneyline, the new 9pm business show starting on October 1st. The other reason is that the channel will now be repeating the premiere episode of their 9:30pm magazine show again 2 hours after it ends at 11:30pm (in case you loved it so much you would want to see it again). The 10:30pm slot now also has a rerun of a different magazine show.

This then leaves only the 10pm and 11pm half hours with live news bulletins, on a channel who's one of a few slogans are "Prime Time, all the Time." (If they were really smart they would have moved the 10pm bulletin out of that slot so that it doesn't air directly against eNews Late Edition on eTV)

It also means that eNCA now becomes the first of South Africa's news channels to sign off at night (11:30pm), compared to the midnight sign off on SABC News' Your World and ANN7's Night Cap.

What makes things sadder is that a large pool of on air anchors that traditionally do the late shift, including Fenly Foxen, Duduzile Ramele, Lindy Mtongana and Mabale Moloi, among others now have to share a shrinking amount of air time between them all. 

This is the second cut back of programing on the channel. Earlier this year the channel cancelled the Africa Edition program that was seen on the international feed on SKY and Livestation.com and also overnight on the DStv feed.