Business Day TV is operated by the media group DBFM which also publishes the Business Day newspaper and is also responsible for The Home Channel (DStv 182) and Ignition (DStv 265) through the Africa Business Channel division.
The rebranded Business Day TV and Bloomberg Television content collaboration is the biggest change for Summit TV since the channel launched on MultiChoice in 2000. Summit TV is available to 6 million viewers in 9 countries.
Bloomberg Television will remain available as its own TV channel in the rest of Africa outside South Africa and can be watched online and that channel's most important programming blocks will be kept on television in daily stripped broadcasting strands on Business Day TV.
The newly conceived business channel - an amalgam of the resources of Bloomberg Television, Summit TV and BDFM - kicked off with a televised business breakfast briefing with Pravin Gordhan, the minister of finance.
The breakfast briefing broadcast on Business Day TV moderated by Guy Johnson of Bloomberg Television - with no women included in the staged presentation and the only real black seen that of the men's business suits - in presentation was interestingly similar in style to the now-controversial breakfast briefings held by The New Age newspaper in conjunction with the SABC. (That newspaper group is starting its own 24-hour television news operation, Africa News Network 7 (ANN7), as a new channel on DStv later in the year.)
"We are truly excited about Business Day TV becoming an extended platform for the strong, independent editorial content we already produce in Business Day," says Peter Bruce, the publisher and editor-in-chief of BDFM in a statement announcing the TV channel's rebrand and Bloomberg Television content fold-in.
"With a daily selection of original Bloomberg Television programming, interviews and reports on the newly branded Business Day TV channel, viewers will now benefit from our extensive coverage of the global markets and economies in addition to leading domestic insight from the BDFM group," says Malcolm Fried, the managing editor for Bloomberg Television in Europe, the Middle East and Africa in the same statement.
Business Day TV which replaces Summit TV promises beefed up financial news coverage with "international and financial news" in the form of Bloomberg Television, with live market coverage and analysis from Europe and the United States for 10 hours a day, in addition to coverage of local markets and news being done by Business Day and the staff of Business Day TV.
Summit TV which didn't run for the extended number of hours as CNBC Africa (DStv 410) did, will now become a more direct competitor in the form of Business Day TV.
"We are proud to be hosting this channel on DStv and believe it will complement and enhance our business news offering on our platform," says Collins Khumalo, the CEO of MultiChoice South Africa.
ALSO READ: The Business Day TV breakfast launch broadcast on DStv is mostly white men sitting in white chairs on a white stage.
