Abigail Visagie next ANN7 anchor to enter another channel's "Presenter Search"

ANN7's lunch time anchor, Abigail Visagie, is the channel's next anchor that will be taking time off to participate in a presenter search competition from another broadcaster, E!.


The talent search show, hosted by Andile Ncube and judged by Terry Pheto, is not much of a 'presenter search' at all. Instead, it yet again takes established domestic tv personalities and treats them as if they are new to an industry where they have worked in, all in the name of maybe getting noticed by a foreign broadcaster.

 [This and the TLC Presenter Search makes the whole local industry seem cheap the way big South African celebrities are willing to do anything for a small role on a tv channel owned by a foreign broadcaster, even though the show they will be presenting is going to be seen by a much smaller audience than they used to and not seen abroad at all]

Other local celebrities that will be making themselves look cheap on the show include Mosa Kaiser (actor), Katleho Sinivasan (who is a presenter on the country's biggest channel, SABC1, but would rather be on a small foreign-owned channel like E!), Danine Naidoo and Ayanda Nhlapo (who were presenters on [ED] before DStv pulled the plug on that channel), Sian Moses and others.

Prior to Visagie, ANN7 anchor Lauren Jenae was a contestant on BET's Top Actor reality show. Though Visagie is a decent anchor, her and other anchors that use ANN7 as a platform to become a 'mainstream celebritiy' instead of a platform to get to a bigger journalistic platform are really hurting the channel as it attempts to build a reputation in the domestic news industry.

It is unclear whether Visagie will continue to anchor on ANN7 while the show airs (I have reached out to the channel).

Peter Stemmet has left ANN7

Peter Stemmet is the next high-profile departure from ANN7. He left the channel at the end of November (please excuse the late post).


He joined ANN7 at inception, as a presenter of GameOn! in its first form and also the sports anchor on ANN7 Prime. In addition, he occasionally served as fill in general news anchor and most recently presented ANN7's 'Race for the White House,' which was the channel's weekly news recap on the US Elections.

He is also a big time sports blogger.

Prior to joining ANN7, Stemmet was a sports anchor at eNCA and is also a former South African Sports Journalist of the Year. He was one of a few journos that made the jump from eNCA to help start up ANN7.

He leaves ANN7 to be a sports anchor for Al Jazeera English, based in Doha.

eNCA abruptly cancels Meet the Media

As quickly as it came, it is now gone. eNCA has abruptly canceled the excellent Meet the Media with Eusebius McKaiser.

The show, which took to the air on July 3rd this year, was launched in response to then SABC COO, Hlaudi Motsoeneng, canceling all SABC programming analysing the South African media landscape.

Not even Mckaiser knows exactly why the show was cancelled. He responded to a tweet with, "Sorry guys I'm as much in the dark as you. Thanks for tuning in. @AntonHarber [eNCA editor in chief] might explain to you."

In a statement about the show's cancellation, eNCA says the show has "ended its current season on eNCA. In the new year, eNCA will be exploring new concepts for their programming to align with 2017's political calendar. eNCA looks forward to working with Eusebius on new projects in 2017"

These new projects the channel aims to launch will be announced towards the end of February.

Comedy Central Africa shifts the Daily Show

Comedy Central Africa (DStv 122) has announced that from January 4th,  it is shifting The Daily Show with Trevor Noah's timeslot from 9pm to 9:55pm.

The show has been airing at 9pm since Trevor Noah took over as host. Prior to that the late night chat show was broadcast in actual late night (after 11pm).

Shifting the show, which takes way too many production breaks compared to similar late night shows,  means that Comedy Central Africa can now put together a stronger prime-time lineup instead of having to dedicate 9pm, the heart of prime time, to one show daily.

Peter van Onselen leaves ANN7

Peter van Onselen, the long running presenter of ANN7's breakfast show, Vuka Africa signed off today for the last time.


He leaves ANN7 to go back to his former broadcast home, etv, where he used to be a bulletin editor. It is not yet clear exaclty what role he would now have at etv/eNCA.

Though ANN7 experienced countless changes over the last three years, the one constant in the equation wass that Peter would be seen anchoring in the morning. In addition to anchoring the morning hours van Onselen has also contributed greatly to the channel's coverage of bigger events like the elections.

On his last bulletin with the channel, Peter tweeted, "My final hour on @ANN7tv . Big highs, big lows. Watch this space...see you on the other side... and Thank You for your support. #3years OUT ."

This means that Express Lunch's Abigal Visagie is the only on air anchor still at ANN7 who has been with the channel since launch.

It is unclear at this moment who will take over Peter's role on Vuka Africa.

Debora Patta reports from inside Aleppo

Debora Patta, CBS News' Foreign Correspondent usually based in Africa has been reporting out of the war-torn Syrian city of Aleppo over these last few days.

This as the Syrian army continues to make strides in reclaiming the City.

Very few American news organisations ever send their own reporters to locations like Aleppo, instead opting to use stock footage and voice overs for reporting that feels very disconnected from the people on the ground.

However, with Patta on the ground, CBS News users get a very real and hands-on experience of what things are like in the City, like in the above picture where she takes viewers inside one of the tunnels once controlled by the rebels.

You can follow Debora's esperience on her Twitter account, @debora_patta

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]

RATINGS: November 2016 free to air highlights

Below are the most watched free to air news bulletins for the month of November:

• Xhosa News (SABC1): 3 802 629
• Zulu News (SABC1): 3 757194
• eNews Direct Headlines (etv): 2 291 601
• eNews Direct [Sunday broadcast] (etv): 2 095 938
• Afrikaans News (SABC2): 1 483 336
• English News (SABC3): 699 735

Palesa Madisakwane joins ANN7 as anchor

Actress Palesa Madisakwane joined ANN7 last week as a weekday anchor. She will also act as producer for the channel that desperately needs seasoned and experienced individuals from the tv world.

Prior to joining the news channel, Madisakwane acted in soaps airing on SABC1, etv and Mzansi Magic.

Though I am usually skeptical about non-news people joining a news channel, Madisakwane has not been bad. She comes across better than most ANN7 anchors and on social networks she comes across as enthused by her work and actively markets ANN7 to her vast social followers, something most other ANN7 personalities don't do as they too busy gracing the red carpet.

Joining ANN7 last week meant she could attend the company's Christmas party, but also likely means she will be on air for the entire festive season, which is one of the perks of joining a news channel at this point of the year.

She has taken to social networks to talk about her joining the channel, stating that she is bidding farewell to acting and that she looks forward to the career elevation this journey brings her.

Robin Adams leaves Al Jazeera

Thanks everybody for watching.

Forgive the poor audio, but here's @RobinAdamsSport signing off for the last time on @AlJazeera. Farewell to TV's most enthusiastic man 😢 pic.twitter.com/LYJWVxqYVe

— Kamahl Santamaria (@KamahlAJE) November 24, 2016

Those were the words Cape Town born sports anchor, Robin Adams, used to sign off from Al Jazeera  English (DStv 406) for the last time after a six and a half year tenure at the Doha-based news network.

Prior to joining Al Jazeera, Adams was a sports anchor at what is known today as eNCA, anchoring and reporting mainly from Cape Town.

No word yet on what the talented anchor has planned next, but he is returning back home. But before that, he got to have another taste of home as Nandos Qatar sponsored his farewell party at Al Jazeera.

Since signing off for the last time, he has been endlessly retweeting farewells and congratulations on a career well done.

RATINGS: October DStv news channels

Courtesy once more of Patrick Conroy's Twitter account (even though he no longer works at eNCA), here are the audience shares for DStv's news channels:

The biggest observation from this is the three channels that pulled a 0% audience share. Having three channels have 0% pulls the credibility of the whole audience measurement poll into question. One has to wonder whether the sample size used for these polls are large enough and, more important, reflective enough of the demographics of DStv viewers. DStv has been growing rapidly in recent years, which has meant rapid changes in the demopgraphics of subscribers. Whether these changes are captured in this data is now highly questionable.

Ignoring the above, here are the highlights:

• eNCA is once again comfortably holding more than half of the audience share. 
• SABC News Channel is getting closer and closer to getting to that 20% mark. The channel's slight tweaks and highly simplified schedule is starting to payoff well.
• Thanks to the circus of the US elections inching close to its peak in October, along with multiple debates, CNN just shot up rapidly to third place, just below 10%, which I would think is near to an all time best for the channel since the 2013 expansion of the domestic news channel offering.
• ANN7's audience share for October worryingly declined. Why is it worrying? The channel's South African of the Year Awards show, which usually leads to a ratings bump did nothing. Personally, I think this is a result of the Awards being branded very poorly this year (Dropping the elegent and understandable 'I Am South African' brand in favour of the cheap sounding and appearing 'SATY Daily Show') and weakly scheduled.
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DStv pulls the plug on [ED]

Get ready to be dumbed down. DStv has announced that they are not renewing the contract of South Africa's only locally ran and owned documentary channel, [ED].

The channel, which is available on channel 190 (just one flip away from DStv's most popular channel overall, SABC1, believe it or not), will cease broadcasting on December 1st.

DStv has no plans to replace [ED], which is now the fifth channel in DStv's channel cuts, following the culling of CBS Action, CBS Drama, True Movies and AMC. The latter channels were cut as a result of DStv being so concerned about subscribers that they wanted to reduce the amount of repeats subscribers are exposed to (DStv seriously has among the country's best spin doctors on hand). The reason for [ED] being cut is simply that the channel's contract wont  be renewed. That's it.

[ED], which was run by Urban Brew studios, featured a large slate of original domestic programming, mainly providing a platform for independent documentaries and self-produced informative chat shows. In addition, it featured a decent amount of quality foreign documentaries at a time when DStv's "documentary channels" prefers giving swamp people a platform.

This marks the first time that DStv has cut a channel with such a large amount of local content and, given how they are cutting costs and channels left and right (Please ignore the lavish and expensive party they hosted last week for M-Net's birthday), one has to wonder exactly how close ANN7 was to being cancelled when those rumours arose a few months back.

Roberto Carletti, the channel's station manager, says, "Thanks to our loyal [ED] viewers and advertisers for their continued support over the years. Through our content, our viewers have remained curious and have been inspired."

While DStv continues to cut channels in South Africa, they continue to lower prices and add channels in the rest of the continent. Think about that.

[Personally,  thnk one thing the channel could have done better is marketing. Its programming was good but it was not marketed very well to average viewers]

The disappearing case of the CNN logo...

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Look at the pictures in this article. There are two things common in all of them: All of them are covering protests and all of them are CNN reporters.

When covering breaking news CNN reporters on the ground usually make it clear that they are from CNN: they wear the CNN jacket, their microphone bears CNN branding and  they usually wear CNN caps as well.

But notice that this is no longer the case. In the face of how the media got this election terribly wrong, and that trust in the media is at its all time lowest and sinking further, CNN seems to no longer be comfortable having their reporters be visibly identifiable by protestors.

By having their reporters go unmarked into protests as if they were local news reporters (In the US, local news has a trust level and is less controversially perceived compared to the big cable news networks like CNN and Fox News), CNN is acknowledging their own role in creating the situation as it is and are hedging against potential retaliation from the protestors.

In prior protests relating to issues the media had a smaller role in creating, when protestors identified someone from CNN, they would often start chanting 'F**k CNN' live on air or even try to intimidate the reporter.

RATNGS: October free to air hghlights

That time of the month again when we get to look back at the prior month's news and actuality ratings highlights:

• Once again the SABC's Xhosa news topped the list, pulling 4.15 million viewers at its peak.
• The Zulu news bulletin (SABC1) is on its tail as always, pulling 4.07 million viewers.
• The next most watched news bulletin, in a distant third, is SABC2's Afrikaans news bulletin with 1.3 million viewers.
• SABC2's 6:30pm multilingual news bulletin is next, with 1.15 million viewers. 
• SABC3's English news bulletin continues to build an audience, now pulling 922 000 viewers at peak. 
• The one minute eNews Direct Headlines on Sunday evenings continue to pull strong numbers for etv, attracting a bit more than 2.6 million viewers at its peak. 
• For the frst time in its history, the standard half-hour edition of eNews Direct, though the Sunday edition only, featured on etv's most watched programmes list. This is a direct result of being sandwiched between the SA Got Talent performance show and results show, both of which pull in excess of 3 million viewers. This eNews Direct bulletin pulled 2.087 million viewers, making it the third most watched news bulletin.
  

• Speak Out continues to be the country's most watched actuality attracting a peak of 2.346 million viewers.

Stray observations:

• DStv had an open weekend for their three main series channels, M-Net, M-Net Edge and Vuzu Amp. Not one channel saw a bump in viewership.
• An American music awards show disguised as an African one, the MTV Africa Music Awards, aired in October. However because it aired across three tv channel's (MTV, MTV Base and on tape delay on etv), it did not make the most watched list for DStv nor etv. News channel ANN7 s hosting their South African of the Year Awards this month. Lets see if they can make the list. 

e.tv launches own lunchtime news bulletin

e.tv this past week launched its own lunchtime news bulletin separate from the News Day bulletin that has been simulcasting with eNCA for the past eight years.


The bulletin, broadcast from Johannesburg, is anchored by Duduzile Ramela from the same studio used for eNews Direct, which she also anchors. This means that she goes on air for the first time at 1pm and signs off at 7pm, quite a long workday. With e.tv looking to cancel prime time news, this is probably where the eNews Direct team will move to permanently once they get cancelled (It must really suck producing a news bulletin you know the channel you on doesn't want).

For the last few months (and prior to that as well but with less consistency) breaking news coverage on eNCA meant that News Day could not start at the top of the 1pm hour, leading to e.tv having a separate traditional news bulletin, anchored by the usual News Day team with Cathy Mohlahlana having to work overtime on eNCA to cover the breaking news.


Having a separate bulletin also means that neither eNCA or e.tv has to end the bulletin with the line, "For our eNCA viewers, News Day continues after the break but for those of you watching on e.tv this is goodbye."

eNCA moves News Day to Johannesburg

Starting this week, eNCA moved its long-running Cape Town based news bulletin, News Day, to Johannesburg.

This comes as the news channel continues to scale back its Cape Town operations in order to control costs. Just last week the channel laid off long-time Cape Town based anchor, Amy McIver, who co-anchored the news bulletin for the last few months. Others based in the Cape Town bureau have been told to either relocate to Johannesburg or be retrenched.

News Day, which is older than even the channel it broadcasts on, started airing on 4 October 2007 as Lunchtime Live based in Cape Town at a time when e.tv was still expanding news hours on the free to air a channel. Being based in Cape Town meant that the anchors could simply drive, or even walk, to parliament to cover events happening there.

Moving the bulletin to Johannesburg also means that not one of the three South African news channels have news bulletins originating from anywhere outside that city. The move also means that the handover from Cathy Mohlahlana to News Day will be much more smoother as breaking news in her slot often overran into News Day's slot, which required a long ad break to get the Cape Town anchors up.

It is unclear how the change affects News Day's actual anchor, Michelle Craig, who is currently on maternity leave. Would she move to Johannesburg to coanchor the bulletin with Shahan Ramkissoon, who is anchoring it solo now, or would she simply go back to being a weekend anchor.