Wednesday, February 23, 2011

BREAKING. M-Net canceling All Access. The Award-winning weekly magazine show might live on later on Mzansi Magic after April.


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M-Net is bringing down the axe on All Access on the M-Net channel after the show just won the award as the best magazine show in South Africa. According to sources the weekly entertainment magazine show will have its last episode on April Fools' day, 1 April at 19:00.

Multiple sources are telling me that All Access that started in April 2009 has been cancelled. That will mean that All Access will end exactly two years after it began its first broadcast on the pay broadcaster. ''The last episode will be on M-Net on 1 April,'' says one of the sources. Another source tells me there might be an ''outside chance'' that All Access might be resurrected on Mzansi Magic (DStv 107) but I'm told it will then be with ''demographically correct'' - meaning black - presenters only.

This very past Sunday All Access won the South African Film and Television Award (Safta) as the best magazine show in South Africa, but multiple people connected to the show and the channel were already buzzing that All Access won't continue for much longer. All Access will definitely disappear from the analogue signal of M-Net by the end March, but production crew blabbed over the weekend already that actual episodes would only be produced during March still and nothing further. That means All Access will also most likely be disappearing from the digital M-Net signal.

I asked M-Net over the weekend about the fate and future of All Access  as well as Carte Blanche Extra and again yesterday whether the sources are correct. The pay broadcaster doesn't want to confirm or deny All Access' cancelation.

''All locally produced content like the Carte Blanche Extra and All Access contracts are for a fixed period of time,'' says M-Net. ''These contracts will near an end towards the end of the fiscal year (April) and M-Net withholds the right to renew them or not. The main focus for the channel in 2011 is the major reality shows (Survivor SA and Idols) and the new soap (The Wild) but this does not necessarily mean that All Access and Carte Blanche Extra will fall away from the schedule permanently,'' says M-Net.

ALSO READ: The brand-new Carte Blanche Extra on M-Net currently not continuing past 10 episodes.
ALSO READ: M-Net planning to move most of its local content off of the M-Net channel.