Wednesday, April 8, 2015

TV news in other languages back on SABC News channel - but now all recorded broadcasts from the bulletins shown on SABC1 and SABC2.


The TV news in other languages are back on the SABC News (DStv 404) TV channel following the SABC's decision to turn SABC News into an English only TV news channel but there is a caveat - all of the TV news bulletins in South Africa's other official languages besides English on the channel are now rebroadcasts of recorded bulletins first shown on SABC1 and SABC2.

The additional half hour of new Afrikaans news which was broadcast on SABC News at 19:30 for instance has been dumped, with Afrikaans news which is now broadcast at midnight (00:00).

It's not live new and additional news, but a rebroadcast (although not indicated or acknowledged as such through any on-screen notification) of the Afrikaans TV news bulletin that is broadcast live on SABC2 on weeknights at 19:00 five hours earlier.

It's the same for the TV news in Zulu, Sotho, Venda, isiNdebele and other languages - the news bulletins are recorded and played out later during the night from those which first aired on SABC1 and SABC2.

The planned new State of the Nation broadcast which was supposed to be an hour long new broadcast in prime time with "news stories from all of South Africa's provinces" didn't materialise and didn't start on 1 April.

(Another interesting change to note is that the Afrikaans TV news on SABC2 changed its format since 1 April. The SABC2 news bulletin is now being done in the format of how the additional TV news bulletin was done on SABC News, starting with a run-down of numerous news headlines and ending with some type of an animal story.)