Thursday, September 23, 2010

BREAKING. The eNews Channel's News Day duo Andrew Barnes and Robyn Smith have split up! Why are they on night shift?


You're reading it here first.

The eNews Channel's (DStv 403) dynamic News Day anchor duo Andrew Barnes and Robyn Smith have slit up! But don't worry, the brilliant Cape Town anchor team won't be apart permanently. Both are temporarily doing the night shift.

Viewers will now have seen Robyn Smith suddenly being the news anchor of eNews Prime Time on e.tv at 19:00 (and doing a superlative job) this week. Meanwhile her News Day cohort Andrew Barnes suddenly popped up on the eNews Channel's Johannesburg set for the local news channel's own prime time News Night show - for instance crossing over to Nikiwe Bikitsha and Jeremy Maggs who's usually in the News Night anchor chair.

Its part of a magnificent logistical ''musical chairs'' manuevre that will make the best of the best TV producers sit with a headache. All of this is caused by a variety of factors like this past weekend's studio damage at e.tv in Hyde Park that damaged the eNews Prime Time set as well as breaking news events.

Robyn Smith in Cape Town is anchoring eNews Prime Time on e.tv with the news bulletin being done from Cape Town while the Johannesburg studio is being repaired. The anchor for next week's eNews Prime Time bulletin has not yet been confirmed, e.tv tells me and when Robyn Smith is doing eNews Prime Time, she won't be doing double duty anchoring News Day as well. (I would say keep Robyn Smith for a little while longer - she's definitely doing stellar work).

Also doing a great job is Andrew Barnes who flew up to Johannesburg to anchor News Night since the regular anchor duo of Nikiwe Bikitsha and Jeremy Maggs went on location to cover the ANC's national general council meeting in Durban.