by Thinus Ferreira
After 29 years E! News on E! Entertainment (DStv 124) has been cancelled just 8 months after the show's production and studio was moved in January this year from Los Angeles to New York.
The entertainment news show that has been a veritable TV institution for decades, is over.
Along with E! News, Pop Of the Morning, as well as Jason Kennedy's celebrity interview show, In the Room have also been cancelled. E! is also moving all remaining studio production back to Los Angeles.
Variety on Tuesday night first reported E! News' cancellation, citing NBCUniversal that runs E! as a pay-TV channel that is "looking to streamline its programming and restructure internally to create more efficiencies".
The dramatic impact of the global Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic also played a role with E! News and other E! shows that went off the air in mid-March 2020 for months, similar to what happened in South Africa and in the TV industries in several other countries. E! News only recently returned to the E! schedule.
Lilliana Vazquez and Scott Tweedie have been the E! News co-anchors since January 2020 after Giuliana Rancic and Jason Kenny left E! News in late-2019 after producer Tammy Filler who joined E! as new news operations boss decided to move E!'s studio news shows to New York from 2020.
South African viewers got their first glimpse of the orange-and-white E! News Daily as it was then known, when M-Net (DStv 101) and e.tv in the late 90's acquired the show and would programme individual insert strips or episodes as filler programming, while it had Jules Asner and Steve Kmetko as the co-hosts - with a goldfish.
E! News Daily morphed into the red-letter E! News Live with John Burke. From 2006 E! News Live became E! News with Ryan Seacrest and Giuliana DePandi (later Rancic) who took over as the new co-anchors.
In interviews over the years, Giuliana spoke several times of how E! News was on the verge of cancellation at E! in 2005 when she agreed to become the managing editor of the show, with a tight deadline from E! bosses to lift ratings for the show that faced the axe. She managed to save it.
After Ryan Seacrest left as co-anchor, Giuliana Rancic first had Terrence Jenkins, and then Jason Kennedy as co-hosts.
Catt Sadler stood in as co-anchor when Giuliana was away or on leave, but in December 2017 Catt Sadler announced that she had left, slamming E! over allegations of gender discrimination and unequal pay for women.
When Giuliana Rancic left E! News in mid-2015, Maria Menounos took over as co-host, but after 3 years Giuliana was back next to Jason as the co-hosts since September 2018. Both said goodbye when the show's production and studio moved from Los Angeles to New York from January 2020.
Lilliana Vazquez and Scott Tweedie have anchoring E! News since January for the past 8 months.
Longtime E! News viewers will remember Ted Casablanca who did Hollywood gossip and "blind items" in his "The Awful Truth" segment, as well as Kristin dos Santos, E!'s resident TV expert who brought viewers news about television.
E! News correspondents who rose to fame through the show over the years range from Samantha Harris and Ken Baker, to Zuri Hall, Marc Malkin, Nina Parker and Melanie Bromley.
ALSO READ: TV CRITIC's NOTEBOOK. As E! marks 15 years in South Africa as a TV channel on DStv, here are 15 things that E! brought into my life that I'm thankful for.
