South African TV channels have to broadcast at least two hours of news programming, of which a single 30-minute news programme has to be in prime time.

It’s a bit of a mouthful, but this state of affair is due to the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa’s (Icasa) Individual Commercial Television Broadcasting Service, section 10 of the Electronic Communications Act of 2005.

Free-to-air channel e.tv wants to change things a bit, and recently applied to Icasa to have its agreement with the Authority altered so that it no longer needs to broadcast the single news programme during prime time.

According to documents filed with Icasa, e.tv wants to amend Clause 6.2. “The Licensee shall broadcast at least two hours of news programming during the performance period, of which at least thirty minutes shall be packaged as a single programme, shall be during prime time,” it currently reads.

Well, e.tv wants to remove the last bit from the text, so that it simply reads “The Licensee shall broadcast at least two hours of news programming during the performance period, of which at least thirty minutes shall be packaged as a single programme.”

Our guess is that all of this has been done so that e.tv can slot programmes into the news slot that would increase (or retain) the channel’s viewership. The prime time slot is usually between 18:00 and 22:00.

Last year e.tv announced that eNews Prime Time will be moving from its regular 20:30 slot to 18:30 weekday slot.

“We constantly need to review our schedule to ensure that we are in alignment with the viewers’ interests, trends and viewing patterns. Market research has indicated that our viewers prefer an earlier English news slot, hence we are making this shift,” said Monde Twala, Managing Director for e.tv Channels Division.

[Image – CC by 2.0/Lotte Grønkjær]