eNCA drops simulcast of e.tv's The Morning Show and switches back to own-produced The South African Morning after 4 days of viewer outrage.

by Thinus Ferreira

Following a serious miscalculation of what pay-TV viewers want to watch in the mornings, as well as days of unrelenting viewer outrage, eNCA (DStv 403) on Friday morning brought back The South African Morning without any explanation after four days of simulcastin e.tv's low-rated The Morning Show.

On Monday eMedia's eNCA TV news channel - as part of yet another on-air and logo rebrand, dropped its The South African Morning time-block, replacing it with e.tv's The Morning Show between 06:00 and 09:00, produced by Cheeky Media with Yusuf Stevens as executive producer.

The Morning Show also added Faith Mangope to the softer lifestyle-slanted show which does sponsored inserts with a lesser emphasis on news and that bears more liking to SABC3's Expresso.

The drastic change prompted unrelenting viewer scorn the past four days with the drastic eNCA schedule change which was met with a barrage of DStv subscribers slamming the channel for replacing the much more newsy strand, co-anchored by the well-liked Gareth Edwards and Tumelo Mothotoane, with the lower production values of The Morning Show.

Viewers were fuming over The Morning Show - which bears no relation to the Apple TV+ drama series of the same name - with presenters who were berated for doing book segments at 6:15am and frivolous lifestyle segment discussions as they stumbled over words, sound and video problems, eating KFC on air, and the softer show's lack of news.

An avalanche of viewers were very vocal over the fact that they have access to e.tv and The Morning Show as a channel on DStv and would watch that if they wanted to.

Viewers said that they were now tuning out eNCA and switching to rival Newzroom Afrika (DStv 405) and SABC2's Morning Live which remains the perennial frontrunner in the South African morning breakfast show TV ratings race.

On Friday morning, The South African Morning was suddenly back without explanation, with Gareth Edwards once again anchoring the early morning time-block but this time solo. Tumelo Mothotoane anchored the NewsLink block solo from 9:00 to 12:00.

eMedia, in response to a media query about eNCA's morning fracas and the switchback, told TVwithThinus on Friday afternoon that "Due to popular demand, The South African Morning returns to eNCA with Gareth Edwards from 6:00 to 9:00. Tumelo will be on-air from 9:00 to 12:00. We have reunited viewers with the news and entertainment they are used to".

eNCA initially decided to cancel The South African Morning and simulcast e.tv's The Morning Show to rather stretch its production of live news hours from 22:00 until midnight, in response to competition from Newzroom Afrika. 

Although placing The South African Morning back on its schedule as an own in-house production, eNCA will continue to now stay in live news programming until midnight. 

Also returning to eNCA is anchor Shahan Ramkissoon who left a year ago, who is now anchoring The Last Word on Thursday snd Friday nights at 20:00.

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