EMedia announces big changes
JOHANNESBURG — eTV is saying goodbye to Days of our Lives – and they are ready for the backlash. The channel picked up the much-loved soapie in 2017 after it was on
SABC for decades.
The soapie will be discontinued from 11 April.
Now eMedia is looking to focus more on local content.
e.tv’s Marlon Davids says they felt like it was the right time for the shake up.
“It’s a difficult decision that we’ve had to make. We felt the time is right to focus on a much more local culture. And we know that we will be bombarded with phone calls because the Days of Our Lives fans are loyal.”
The change to the schedule was needed to create a certain flow of content, he says.
“We are abandoning certain procedural franchises like Chicago PD, Fire, Med and
MacGyver. Some of them might move, but we’ll see how we can do that.
“As far as movies are concerned, e.tv will have a local movie festival on Saturdays between April and the end of June. We’ve invested a lot of money in new movies. I believe the money we are spending on local content is also good for our viewers.
“We’ll eventually get to a place when we can have a movie of the week and it’s a local film.”
There are more changes coming to the e channels e.tv head of local productions Helga Palmer says from 11 April, there will be a 90-minute local content slot, which will be broken up by the news.
The block will include Isono from season 1, which was previously exclusively on
BET, Imbewu at 9pm [which moves up from 9.30pm] and the new show, The Black Door.
“We start off with Durban Gen, followed by House of Zwide, then going to Scandal! the news at 8pm. 8:30pm you come back and it’s Isono, then we’ve moved Imbewu. This time we’ve listened to our viewers who say they like to watch the show but it’s too late can you move it earlier.
“The 9:30pm slot does so well that we thought let’s take full advantage of that and now we can have some adult content on that slot. We put out a brief, give us something raunchy, give us some sex, all that nudity. And we selected The Black Door, coming on the 11 April. That is our local content treatment coming soon.”