BREAKING. New offices for the eNews Channel and eNews Africa with full-time correspondents to be up and running from September.

You're reading it here first.

At the beginning of the month I broke the news RIGHT HERE that the eNews Channel (DStv 403) and eNews Africa is working on setting up offices in Nigeria and Kenya, and now I can be first to tell that the eNews Channel and eNews Africa expect these offices to be up and running by September.

''eNews Africa will establish offices in Nairobi, Kenya and Lagos, Nigeria,'' Chris Maroleng, Africa editor of the eNews Channel and anchor of the weekly Africa 360 tells TV with Thinus, confirming the news I revealed at the beginning of July. 

''These offices are expected to become operational in September 2011,'' he says, ''and will be staffed by two full time correspondents and camera operators''.

''It is anticipated that these offices will cover news and events in the countries in which they are based and will also act as platforms to leverage more content out of the west and east African regions,'' says Chris Maroleng.

ALSO READ: eNews Channel and eNews Africa busy setting up offices in Nigeria and Kenya to expand the news operation's pan-African news coverage and reach.

BREAKING. The eNews Channel is BREAKING EVEN!

You're reading it here first. The eNews Channel (DStv 403) with famous news hound faces like Pat Pillai and Debora Patta has been up a running for only A YEAR AND FOUR MONTHS and now South Africa's first independently run 24 hour news channel is breaking even.

This is an enormously impressive feat, and a huge feather in the cap of e.tv.

The remarkable performance is even greater given 1. the difficulty of launching any new TV channel, especially a 2. news channel with huge overheads (news is an especially expensive TV genre to produce), 3. the relative state of the economy as well as 4. shrinking ad budgets.

Hosken Consolidated Investments (HCI) who owns 64% of e.tv indicates in their half year results that the eNews Channel has passed the breakeven point.

The eNews Channel should start to actually contribute to the group's income during the period of October 2009 to end-March 2010. The eNews Channel (this news ia a month old already) is now also the most popular news channel on the fast-growing DStv Compact bouquet.

MY SCOOP CONFIRMED! I was first on 1 October already with THIS NEWS that e.tv is planning a brand new spin-off channel from the eNews Channel, that will be broadcasting to the rest of Africa. HCI's half year results now confirms this.

The new channel is starting out as that late night, three hour news block, called eAfrica News, but that will be the proper name of the new 24 hour channel that should be launching soon.