E! Entertainment (DStv 124) in South Africa will finally rebrand and change its on-air look on 23 September to look similar to the new E! Entertainment look in America which was unveiled in May and introduced in July already. The new website refresh of E! Entertainment's online portal, eonline, was also changed in July.
The new look introduced in America two months ago has since made E! Entertainment still showing red and purple in South Africa, looking schizophrenic and caught between different, overlapping, wildly incongruent looks since E! News and other material sporting the new look crept in and have already been seen daily on the entertainment channel.
Add the massive amount of highly disturbing sound bleeps E! Entertainment ironically employs to block out all other brand and media publication mentions - although its actually reporting on these brands and makes its business out of telling people about what is happening with these brands, viewers have not been happy the last few months with this channel.
Even the new E! News set looks out of kilter since its fitting in with the new look, but for South African viewers stillfinding itself stuck inside the overall old look.
South African viewers are feeling caught in the middle between two wildly differing looks for E! Entertainment. The fact that the change-over and a more unifying and uniform look will again tie everything on the channel together, it will restore some cohesion and normalcy to the channel's disappointing on-air look and feel the past few months.
"We seek to grow the channel further in South Africa and engage more local fans in E!'s pop culture buzz," says Colin McLeod, the managing director for emerging markets for Universal Networks International in a statement. Universal Networks International in London runs E! Entertainment's UK feed for South Africa.
The new E! Entertainment look incorporates the colours of black, orange and white. South Africa will change over on 23 September along with the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Asia, Australia, Israel, Portugal,
Turkey, Greece, Benelux, Nordics, Romania, Poland, Balkans, Czech Republic,
Slovakia and other African markets.
