SCREEN AFRICA EXCLUSIVE: At a glitzy function held on 3 July at Cantare in Montecasino, Johannesburg, South African free-to-air channel e.tv officially announced that its long-running soapie, Scandal!, would be broadcast five times a week as from 5 July.
Previously broadcast from Mondays to Thursdays at 19h30, a Friday slot has been added to the Scandal! schedule due to popular demand, effectively amounting to three months’ worth of extra content a year. Scandal! is produced by Ochre Moving Pictures.
e.tv’s hip and popular lifestyle music show, Club 808, produced by Red Pepper Pictures, has moved from Friday to the Saturday 18h30pm slot to make way for Scandal!.
Said e.tv’s head of local content Keshni Rajoo: “We began broadcasting Scandal! in January 2005 and the audience ratings (ARs) have grown steadily over the years to the extent that we now have an average of four million viewers. The expansion to a five-day broadcast is in response to the voice of our audience.
“By moving Club 808 to the primetime Saturday 18h30 slot we are giving viewers a double dose of youth culture as the show is preceded by Reality Check.”
Ilse van Hemert, series producer of Scandal! revealed that over the past year, the writing team felt that the storylines were too dense to accommodate in only four episodes a week.
“There are so many soaps in South Africa that viewers are demanding more quality,’ continued Van Hemert. “We can see that our viewers respond to quality. Our target market constitutes the major portion of South Africa so we’ve had to expand our world in Scandal. We’ve been working to give the show more substance so that parents will encourage their children to watch the show with them.
“A new family has been introduced into Scandal! – the Ngemas – and viewers will be exposed to their struggles to keep their values in place. To date, Scandal! has incorporated two of the elements essential to the successful soap – secrets (and scandals!) and family. Now we’re introducing a third element crucial to soaps – more romance.’
In closing Van Hemert stressed that the Scandal! team keeps its nose to the ground to ascertain what is current in South Africa and what matters to their audience.
Club 808 producer Melody Xaba noted that the show currently has the biggest following of any local lifestyle music show on Twitter.
“As per last week we had 130,000 followers. Club 808 is still a relatively new show, we’re only three years old. At the beginning it was difficult to get buy-in from local musicians and singers, so we’ve come a long way. The show has won a PromaxBDA award as well as SAFTAS.
“We are excited about moving to a new timeslot and regard it as a fresh challenge,’ stated Xaba.
Report by Joanna Sterkowicz
