City Press in English and sister newspaper Rapport in Afrikaans are both carrying front page lead stories above the fold in their nationwide editions today, reporting how ANN7 TV news boss Rajesh Sundaram fled the highly embarrassing ANN7 TV news channel on Friday just a week after it launched.
Rajesh Sundaram, who now says he fears for his life, worked at the Midrand-based headquarters of the Infinity Media TV station.
ANN7 has been trying to do a 24-hour TV news service but has failed miserably when it buckled under an avalanche of amateur on-air mistakes and technical chaos behind the scenes, instantly making ANN7 the most embarrassing TV channel ever launched and seen in South Africa.
The otiose television trash launched last Wednesday on MultiChoice's DStv but has instantly been derided ever since by TV critics, commentators, analysts, and the South African public at large unable to stomach the ANN7 TV mess.
Rajesh Sundaram who was a senior executive at ANN7 is quoted in City Press and Rapport as saying president Jacob Zuma visited ANN7 and were given assurances that ANN7 would be "pro-ANC", that president Jacob Zuma said ANN7 was "better than the SABC", and that ANN7 workers who've been working for 14 to 15 hours a day have been called "monkeys", and that the equipment to run a channel such as ANN7 is "still not all in" and that staff have not been properly trained.
"On the broadcasting system they're using, ENPS, just about nine people out of 130 were trained," Rajesh Sundaram is quoted in City Press.
ANN7's group chief executive, Nazeem Howa, told City Press that "Rajesh Sundaram has made several outlandish allegations which are not worthy of a response."
