Thinus Ferreira
e.tv says it was forced to cancel its expensive but diminishing primetime soap Scandal! and that while it was a difficult and "a painful decision", it had to be done since it was in the best interest of e.tv as a broadcaster.
Vuyelwa Booi, e.tv's head of local programming, spoke briefly late on Thursday afternoon at eMedia's head office in Hyde Park.
e.tv held a type of media event to mark Scandal's 5 000th episode on e.tv. This was somewhat bizarre and unusual for a cancelled show, with e.tv that only old and invited some Johannesburg media and influencers to hear what the channel and certain Scandal! creatives had to say.
Once cancelled and with fast diminishing returns, broadcasters usually no longer invest time, resources and money in trying to publicise finished series it since it represents an unrealised return on the investment from an attention economy perspective.
After some damaging moves and decisions the past year on the sides of both e.tv and Ochre Media that ranged from scheduling and frequency changes to character changes and set and scenery updates in various attempts to try and revive Scandal! flagging fortunes, e.tv cancelled Scandal! after 26 years.
Scandal's ratings started to erode on e.tv to where it now hovers around 3 million viewers.
The Ochre Media weekday soap started in January 2005, with the final episode that will now air on 26 June 2026.
Scandal! films at Sasani Studios in Highlands North, with Stan Joseph as executive producer, Ilse van Hemert as consulting producer, Sanele Zulu as series producer and director Sphamandla Ngcobo. Around 90 people work on the show.
About cancelling Scandal!, Vuyelwa Booi, e.tv's head of local programming, on Thursday said cancelling a show like Scandal! that used to prop up e.tv's primetime schedule for many years"is never an easy decision to make".
"There are many conversations that take place over a long period of time before one gets to a very difficult decision like this."
Vuyelwa Booi acknowledged that many people are being put out of jobs with Scandal!'s axing and that "these are people with lives, with families" which are "not lost to us", but noted that "at the end of the day this is also a business".
Vuyelwa Booi said that for Scandal! "the writing started to be on the wall" - meaning that it was a local TV production with diminishing returns - and "that as a business this is where you are right now, what are the next steps that you are going to take to ensure that as a business you continue to do what you need to do, successfully".
"It was not an easy decision to make. It was a painful decision to have to make," she said.
"At the end of the day, the bottom line becomes what is the best business decision to make. It's very painful."
Grace Mahlaba, head writer and creative producer of Scandal!, said that what Ochre Media is planning for the end of Scandal! in June 2026 "is phenomenal" and that the story could "fill five movies".