Today, 20 years ago, the red letter "be free with e" TV channel, set-up and ran from its Longkloof Studios in Cape Town, made its debut as South Africa's first - and still only - free-to-air commercial TV channel, bringing South Africans more free television content than what was available on the SABC after Hosken Consolidated Investments (HCI) formed the Midi Consortium and launched e.tv.
Despite struggling in its beginning years and a flurry of reports about the cash-guzzling e.tv's impending demise, e.tv that at the time lost a million rand a day, managed to make a splash, lure viewers and to eventually turn its financials around and become profitable for the first time in 2003.
e.tv that initially broadcast for 6 ours a day from 17:00 to 23:00 until it went 24 hours in 1999, kept expanded its programming, ranging from hits like WWE wrestling to Walker Texas Ranger and Baywatch, to giving Joe Kambule the Phat Joe Show, and Nicky Greenwall's Nightlife (later retiled The Showbiz Report) - to misses like its disastrous first local soap tryout Backstage and its failed and critically panned first morning show attempt, The Toasty Show.
The channel stole The Oprah Winfrey Show and Felicia Mabusa-Suttle away from the SABC, established Debora Patta and 3rd Degree from 2001 as "no fear, no favour" content and even gave South Africans free-to-air late night erotica in the form of Emmanuelle.
e.tv turned the Madam and Eve cartoon strip into a local comedy series, and has since continued to grow its local content offering with various drama series and telenovelas, while doing local format adaptations of shows ranging from Fear Factor SA and The Biggest Loser SA to SA's Got Talent.
Local content wise, most notably, over the past two decades e.tv altered the South African TV landscape by introducing and nurturing two now hit local soaps, Scandal! and Rhythm City - both of which are still going strong - and introducing eNews on 17 January 1999 as South Africa's first credible TV news bulletin alternative to the South African public broadcaster.
In fact, the establishment of eNews as a TV news division that spawned the eNews Channel in 2008 and turned into eNCA (that became 10 years old in June), in all probability can be regarded as e.tv's biggest achievement and the biggest positive contribution that e.tv has made to South Africa's media and television landscape.
While e.tv remains under pressure and the past 2 decades haven't been an easy ride - marked by several restructurings, high-profile executive in-fighting, palace intrigue and oustings, news downsizing, curtailing of e.tv's former African expansion dreams, and the massive and complex challenge of switching to digital terrestrial television broadcasting (DTT) without government help - eMedia Investments keeps forging ahead.
e.tv that launched its Openview free-to-air satellite service to carry its set of DTT channels continues to expand and plans to launch OpenNews as a free-to-air TV news channel on 1 November.
e.tv also keeps investing and making an ever-growing number of local programming with moderate success, despite budget constraints.
The channel also managed to normalise its programme offering that was overly dependent on a few ratings-grabbers like wrestling to a more rounded-out schedule that's a better overall blend of American and local shows and films, local and international soaps, its Craze youth strand, and local telenovelas.
