The SABC is moving its hit local talk show Zaziwa on SABC1 from Thursdays at 18:30 and dumping it on Sundays at 20:30 while presenter Pearl Modiadie is spreading her wings with a new show, Raw Silk.
The shock-move comes after SABC1 last year planned to move the show to a so-called "death slot" of later in the evening, but then gave the show a reprieve at the last moment when other commissioned local programming set to take its 18:30 timeslot wasn't finished in time.
After the completion of its temporary schedule disruption for AFCON 2017, the SABC is moving Zaziwa with presenter Pearl Modiadie to Sunday nights at 20:30 from 12 February. The SABC hasn't given any explanation for the move.
In October 2016 the SABC backtracked at the last minute after it wanted to move Zaziwa to 21:00 on SABC1 where it would have suffered a dramatic viewership drop off at a much later time period where it would have had to compete against SABC2's Muvhango and Mzansi Magic's The Queen.
Zaziwa is currently luring around 3.5 to 4 million viewers on Thursday nights, making it the most watched local TV talk show on South African television.
Now the SABC is inexplicably moving Zaziwa to an even worse day and timeslot - Sunday nights where it will be up against e.tv's Sunday night films and Mzansi Magic's power house local shows.
It's not yet clear if Pearl Modiadie is staying on at Zaziwa where she has been the presenter and associate producer.
She will however become the presenter of a new SABC1 show, Raw Silk, starting on SABC1 on Tuesday 7 February at 21:00 and already started filming for Raw Silk in late 2016. Pearl Modiadie is either leaving Zaziwa or will be doing double duty presenting both shows.
On social media Pearl Modiadie told followers two days ago that she's in-studio and doing a voice-over session for Raw Silk.
