by Thinus Ferreira
e.tv has dumped its low-rated breakfast show The Morning Show after seven years and is replacing it from today with eNCA's The South African Morning between 06:00 and 08:30 to save money.
eMedia cancelled its long-running Sunrise in mid-2018 and replaced it with The Morning Show - not to be confused with the American drama series The Morning Show on Apple TV+ set behind-the-scenes of a breakfast show.
The Morning Show, produced for e.tv by Cheeky Media, went through several iterations and multiple on-air changes over the past seven years
It's viewership struggled against SABC2's Morning Live, SABC3's Expresso, and several other cheaply done live morning shows across several of MultiChoice's DStv pay-TV channels.
The Morning Show was cancelled with Lee-Roy Wright, Carla McKenzie, Kgosi Rankhumise, Bolele Polisa and Brighton Mhlongo as the last set of presenters.
Neither e.tv nor eNCA have issued any press release to the media about either the cancellation of The Morning Show on e.tv or the simulcast of The South African Morning on e.tv from September.
Two years ago eNCA (DStv 403) and e.tv courted controversy when it decided to drop producing an original morning show for its pay-TV news channel and to simulcast The Morning Show on both e.tv and eNCA.
It meant that DStv pay-TV audiences who pay for television and by implication a better product, suddenly got free-to-air content on a pay-TV channel, that they already got access to anyway.
eNCA and e.tv dropped the bad plan and returned The South African Morning to the eNCA schedule after just four days and kept The Morning Show on e.tv.
Now eMedia is doing the reverse and will be using an eNCA programming strand to fill a timeslot on e.tv's schedule that it no longer wants to do original content for.
It will now work the other way around: Content that DStv subscribers are paying for to see, will now be made available for two and a half hours for free-to-air viewers on e.tv - in other words, original TV content produced for a pay-TV audience will be shown for free on a terrestrial free-to-air TV channel.
The South African Morning that also constantly goes through presenter line-up changes now has Dan Moyane and Masego Rahlaga as the anchors. eNCA hasn't said or explained anything to the media about the latest simulcast plan.
eMedia Holdings in its integrated report for 2025 alluded to the coming change when Khalik Sheriff, CEO, said about eNCA that "In the near future, The South African Morning, the vibrant show aired on eNCA every morning at 06:00, will also be simulcast on e.tv".
