With the launch of e.tv’s 24-hour news channel, Mail & Guardian writers decided to switch on their TV sets and sit out the long news night.
Ferial Haffajee: Launch bulletin on Sunday June 1 until 10pm, Monday June 2 from 6pm to 11pm
On the Sunday night in mid-May when the machetes were raised in Alexandra, I turned on the TV to find nothing but re-runs across e.tv and all the public broadcasting channels.
So, I waited with bated breath for the launch of e.tv’s 24-hour news channel on Sunday. Finally, a station that I’d be able to switch on to any time of the day for constantly updated news.
The closest thing we have of this pace is the excellent joint programming of Talk Radio 702 and Cape Talk. But still I wait.
The launch edition was suitably fast-paced and chic. Presenters Jeremy Maggs and Redi Direko make a fine anchoring pair and their style is to move off-anchor to screens to do live interviews, complete with businesslike clipboards under arms.
This makes the SABC style of static anchor and set bulletin pieces seem tired.
The e.24 model is close to Sky-TV’s ultra-modern news offering and the running tickertape is another element of 21st-century TV news viewing. But there it stopped. The channel was presented with a great breaking story: Judge John Hlophe triggered a constitutional crisis by nudge-winking at his fellow Constitutional Court judges. Plus refugees were being moved to camps with a corresponding outcry from the Nimby’s (not in my back-yarders). Great news in a country where we should not struggle to fill 24 hours of news.
But struggle eNews channel did. By Monday night it had not advanced the Hlophe story and presented us with the same visuals (Hlophe refusing to comment; Hlophe graduation photograph; Hlophe at computer) as it had on Sunday. It used the same commentator (activist advocate Jeremy Gauntlett) at the same desk wearing the same cloak saying the same things.
There were angles aplenty to follow: newspapers broke stories about which Constitutional Court judges were approached; and the country was getting apoplectic again. This feeling of staleness by the use of old pictures was evident across the economics and sports bulletins too.
And I wanted to hear more from ordinary South Africans rather than talking heads — there is now the time and space to let people speak in their own voices.
The station has hired liberally and from the cream of the crop, but the breadth of camera, journalistic and editing talent was not in evidence in its first week.
Bulletins were not re-edited, new material not shot and stories not advanced hour by hour. By contrast, Joanne Joseph on SABC3’s flagship bulletin anchored a much tighter, fresher news sequence on Monday, which took the day’s news further than e.tv did.
It’s early days and we shouldn’t judge a new channel for at least three months, say industry experts. But I’m not sure I agree. In the attention deficit economy you’ve got to capture viewers from week one. I’m still on 403, but I can feel my remote control finger itching to go back to 406, Al-Jazeera, my news channel of choice.
Charlotte Bauer: Monday June 2 from 7.30pm to 9.30pm
If you didn’t catch that important news item the first time, wait 15 minutes and it’ll come on again. If you have trouble concentrating, wait 15 more and it’ll come on again. If you have Asperger’s syndrome, you’ll be ecstatic to hear that, if you wait another 15, it’ll come on again.
Apparently it’s called ‘looping” and on Monday evening e.tv’s day-old baby news channel made more loops than a cowboy’s lasso.
But, like swotting for an exam, repetition really helps the information to sink in. Which is why I could get full marks for knowing:
Our national rugby team is practising hard for its match against Wales, though lying on their backs in a cold field pedalling their legs makes them look like cheerleaders who’ve survived a plane crash.
Better-than-thou residents of Corlett Gardens in Johannesburg are not impressed with having to live next door to the refugees who were dumped on their polished doorsteps, even though one classy lady whistled through her teeth and shook her curlers while venting indignation.
Catholic Archbishop Buti Tlhagale likes flowers. While a voice-over explained his views on the xenophobia crisis, the poor archbish was made to stand in a garden with his nose buried in a dahlia, or was it a daisy? Whoops, there goes five marks.
Why weatherman Derek can’t say ‘Polokwane”. I have mixed feelings about Derek. While, at first sight, my colleagues and I shrieked and wondered why e.tv hired an American to do the job (or perhaps a Canadian, I can’t tell), Derek has bounce and a mini Mohican. He looks so much friendlier than some of the dummies who’ve stood there pointing to cold fronts with a large drumstick, I think the nation might come to accept him as being a gale force for good. Perhaps Derek is e.tv’s way of saying no to xenophobia?
Debra Patta’s newborn might be a fragile bundle that needs fattening up and TLC before it can impress the guests with party tricks, but already this baby has a healthier pair of lungs than SABC-TV.
Yunus Momoniat: From midnight on Monday June 2 to 2am on Tuesday June 3
Four or five clips are repeated over and over again on this second night of broadcasting. Xenophobia, Hlophe, Ben Said’s three-minute diagnosis of South Africa’s ills (part one revisited), Mugabe-Mutambara and the weather. Simple rescreenings with no variation or elaboration. But it’s obviously early days.
Since the clips are the same as those that appeared in e.tv’s free-to-air 7pm and 10pm programmes, they suffer from all the same defects: a sensationalist approach that some might find sassy; hyperbolic presentation and organisation of content; a lack of depth, a focus on the same old 702-type obsessions that border on Afropessimism; an easy ride for business; a reliance on the same old commentators and an almost studied neglect of government pronouncements, state workings (except for court cases); parliamentary committee workings or debates in the National Assembly. And where’s the international news? Perhaps they don’t want to compete with their heavyweight counterparts.
Repetition seems to be the main problem though and one can only speculate that this is simply the slow birth of a new media baby. One hopes that the future will bring more rigorous investigation and lengthier clips, more in-depth investigations and documentary explorations and — to repeat, less repetition.
The bluish look is attractive and set design certainly needs no correction. But there’s a surfeit of it, a new channel showing off its look in ads that incessantly feature the medium itself. And that American weatherman? Well, let’s not get xenophobic. He seems pleasant enough. But the blonde anchor re—telling the joke about wanting him to pronounce the name ‘Louis Trichardt”?
One can only, unfairly, compare e.tv’s form and content with the more accomplished 24-hour news channels such as the Big Three: BBC, CNN and now al-Jazeera. That the comparison is unflattering comes as no surprise, given the relatively meagre resources of this nevertheless brave new venture.
Nosimilo Ndlovu: Tuesday June 3 from 3am to 5am
The new e.tv news channel’s slogan ‘prime time all the time” implies that you do not have to wait for prime time news to find out about big news items. The channel promises to deliver news all day long, bringing its viewers breaking news. But after watching you realise what it really means is that it will play the prime time news over and over again. Nothing is new.
Prime time news on e.tv at 7pm is repeated the entire day, from 3am to 5am. The anchors make the same jokes, laugh in the same way, sit in the same way and even the adverts are screened in identical order. There was no breaking news. Listening to the radio about the same time I found out about a bus accident that resulted in 57 people going to hospital, but the e.tv news repeat continued without interruption to report the accident.
At the end of prime news time Derek van Dam presented the weather wearing the same outfit as the night before. He smiled proudly every time he said Polokwane or Mpumalanga in his American accent. Of course everyone has seen the commercial for the station where it shows us a cameraman teaching Van Dam how to pronounce words that even the most stupid white South African has learned to say.
Frances, the news anchor, returned and kicked off again. She promised the latest news, the music struck up and she smiled, fixed her pages and turned to the camera. We got the same news she delivered two hours previously. By the end of the 5am news I could sing along and blink in time to dear Frances.
Sello S Alcock: Tuesday June 3 from 5am to 8am
I rose early to catch South Africa’s first 24-hour independent news channel with some excitement on Tuesday morning. Having watched the channel’s news hour with Jeremy Maggs and Redi Direko the previous night, I was hoping to see some improvement. The news hour programme the night before I felt highlighted a television channel very much trying to find its feet. For starters I expected it to lead with what many would consider the story of the week: the Judge President Hlophe saga. I hoped to see this not only lead the news channel but also to see incisive analysis on the implications of the saga for South Africa.
Unfortunately the channel opted to beat the slow dying horse, namely the xenophobic attacks. Ben Said attempted to give an analysis of the South African psyche and our moral fibre. In my humble opinion this fell flat — I believe the analysis was superficial and did not reveal any earth-shattering insight into the attacks.
So there I was, having sacrificed an hour of sleep, waiting to be blown away by the most up-to-date news and information. Alas it was not to be. In fact I felt a sense of déjà vu as it broadcast the exact content as the night before.
Okay, so even if looping is the formula, it was already 5am. A quick zap to our notorious public broadcaster makes my point: Romy Titus looked fresh and so did her content. SABC3 opened with global stories making headlines and, as it wound down the hour, it tackled the latest top stories from Africa with an emphasis on domestic issues.
I kept zapping back hoping somebody would now be awake at e.tv, but I was confronted with the same content.
Finally at about 6am a hot-looking Tshepang Motsekuoa and a polished McFarlane Molele graced us with their presence. Unfortunately for them SABC’s Morning Live was on and what grabbed my attention now was Vuyo Mbuli reporting live from a Midrand refugee camp.