eTV comes of age with eNews

June 8th, 2008

Walk around the sparkling new high-tech newsroom that eTV has built for eNews, its 24-hour news pay-TV channel, and you sense a small, spunky station coming of age.

eTV has always had a small newsroom run on a tight budget, which is why it has sometimes felt like a one-woman show. But within those limitations, in the 10 years since its launch, it has managed to assert its independence and tell stories more fluently and freshly than the Goliath on the other side of town, the SABC.

eTV is now the number two local channel, overtaking MNet, SABC2 and SABC3 and, with some 11-million viewers, are only dwarfed by SABC1. They are also, it seems, turning a handsome profit.

But now their news operation jumps to almost 200 journalists and technicians in a state-of-the-art technical operation. One cannot fail to be impressed by their new studios and the investment they have made in software, hardware and some of the best-known names in South African news broadcasting.

But if this is a large step for eTV, it is a giant leap for South African broadcasting, which is finally catching up with the revolution in broadcasting news that started more than 25 years ago.

Ted Turner’s launch of CNN in 1980 meant that the old style of carefully packaged and controlled half-hour prime time news gave way over time to live, mobile, 24-hour news broadcast instantly from around the globe. It has changed the way we view the world and how we participate in it. CNN turned the first Gulf War of 1992 into the first war shown live on TV; by the second war a decade later, there were a number of channels using highly mobile, live, satellite and internet-based coverage to bring it into the world’s lounges.

Most of these stations gave a Washington/London view of the world, and it wasn’t until the launch of Al Jazeerah International just two years ago that we got a different perspective on global events. And hopefully eNews will give us a local, South African perspective of these events, though this will take resources and capacity that they do not have at this stage.

Up to now, South Africans have had to be content with the old style of packaged news at set times, and able to turn to the live news channels only for international coverage. SABC launched their SABC International last year, but it was done in a half-hearted and amateurish way, and has had little impact since it is only available on Vivid decoders, of which there are a handful in the country.

eNews’s launch brings us into the modern news age, for better or for worse. It promises the excitement of live, instant coverage of major events. The drawback, however, is that this kind of news coverage can, on most days, be mind-numbingly boring.

When there is a big event, we all turn to live television. But on slow news days they have to fill massive amounts of time and do it cheaply – and the result is usually a rotation of the same stories and a proliferation of talking heads.

This has led to what one writer has called the “punditocracy� – a class of professional commentators who can supply on demand quick, expert-sounding sound-bytes on almost any topic. Most of these newsrooms now have a desk of “schedulers�, people dedicated to finding and booking the pundits needed to keep the screen filled at no great expense.

And this form of news has no gatekeepers. The rush to get material on first and live means that accusations and allegations are often aired before they can be checked. Corrections, or balancing comments, or other points of view may or may not follow later, but in the meantime the allegations are made on air and the pundits start to analyse it. In the words of the Project for Excellence in Journalism in the US, the traditional “journalism of verification� is replaced by “journalism of assertion�.

The proliferation of such channels, combined with the 24-hour live news we get on the internet, gives us much more and quicker information, but it is by no means clear that we get more accurate or more useful material.

In choosing to scrap its plans for its own satellite operation and make its offering through Multichoice, eTV has been smarter than its rivals. Multichoice would have made eNews a good offer to join their satellite bouquet rather than launch their own, a factor which gives one hope for the channel’s longevity.
Multichoice’s main potential rival, Telkom Media, has already stalled, with Telkom withdrawing its backing, leaving us bereft of hope for substantial choice in this market.

The licensing of satellite broadcaster was supposed to give us choice and competition. So far, it has only strengthened the Multichoice behemoth.

Inevitably, eTV is having a rough time in its first few weeks. Keeping the screen full all day and all night is nightmarishly difficult, and that is why you are seeing so much of the station’s own promotional material and logos, repeated again and again, and why there is such a chorus of apologies for technical blapses.

An interview I first saw on Tuesday morning on the Judge Hlophe story was still running with their coverage on Wednesday evening. Keeping the screen filled is one thing, making it interesting is even harder.

But that will come, with time. The critical test will be the first big running news story, when eNews should be able to gather as wide an audience as it can on satellite television. Multichoice reaches into about 10% of South African households, notably the wealthier ones.

eTV and eNews may never be the biggest channels in the country, but this latest move may put them on the path to becoming the television news and information leader. And that is not bad for a small, young station up against the mighty SABC.

Entry Filed under: Anton Harber, Journalism, Media regulation, TV