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SABC 3 is shaking up its schedule yet again

Cape Town –  SABC3 will announce another schedule shake-up for the channel that will come into effect from 1 April.

According to insiders, SABC3 will announce that it is switching a large number of its shows’ timeslots.

It will also introduce a new swathe of local content – as it also gets ready to dump late night and overnight repeats to cut back on rebroadcast fees.

Here’s what’s happening on SABC3 from April

- Expresso is being reduced back to two and a half hours. From Monday 17 April Expresso is set to start half an hour later at 6:30 to make space for a half hour of kids programming at 6:00 on weekdays.

- The existing line-up of SABC3’s 09:00 hour of repeats is dumped for repeats on weekdays of Real Talk with Anele from Monday 3 April.

- After taking away the Venda-language soap Muvhango repeat on SABC3 in July 2016, it is suddenly back – at 11:30 on weekdays.

- The weekday chatter, Afternoon Express will move back to 16:00 from Monday 3 April.

Real Talk with Anele gets upgraded and moves from 16:00 to 17:00. Basically Afternoon Express and Real Talk with Anele are switching timeslots, with SABC3 now believing that Real Talk – that constantly attracts more buzz – has more potential to lure a bigger actual audience. 

- The news at 18:30 on SABC3 is becoming News @ 6 from April – a simulcast of the news done on DStv’s SABC News (DStv 404) channel with anchors Peter Ndoro and Francis Herd.

- That knock-on effect means that the American soap The Bold and the Beautiful is shifting timeslots – from 18:00 to 18:30 on weekdays on SABC3 from Monday 3 April.

- The hugely popular Bold, perennially the most watched show on SABC3, will now serve as the lead-in for  local soap Isidingo that stays put at 19:00. SABC3 hopes that Bold’s buoyant viewership will filter through to the Endemol Shine Africa produced Isidingo.

- The local talker Trending South Africa that started in daytime on SABC3, switched to night time and then got a 12:00 weekday repeat, is getting cut down from five days to four episodes per week, losing the Friday episode. Trending SA will also no longer get any daytime repeat on SABC3 from April but will see its broadcast timeslot move half an hour earlier from 22:00 to 21:30.

- From Thursday 6 April Top Billing moves from 20:00 to 20:30.

SABC3’s investigative magazine show Special Assignment moves from Wednesdays at 21:30 to Mondays at 21:00.

-SABC3’s long running Sunday night current affairs interview show Interface at 21:30 is  getting axed. Interface’s last episode will be on Sunday 2 April, thereafter replaced by a celebrity-driven type profile show entitled Celebuville in the same timeslot from Sunday 8 April.

Flurry of new local content

SABC3 is unleasing a new wave of local content from April.

The previously announced channel switch from SABC1 to SABC3 of Clover’s latest season of the advertiser-funded production (AFP), Tropika Island of Treasure Seychelles will start on SABC3 on Monday 27 March at 19:30.

Other new shows include a female presented car maintenance and driving test show Driving in Heels starting Tuesday 4 April at 21:00, Hostess with Lorna Maseko starting Tuesday 4 April at 20:30, and the cooking dating reality show Dinner Date set to start on Wednesday 5 April at 19:30.

After several push backs the delayed Uyanda It’s On that was originally scheduled for 2016 is finally set to start on SABC3 on Wednesday 5 April at 21:00. The reality show follows the former SABC1 publicist and socialite Uyanda Mbuli.

Friday 7 April will  see the start of the new SABC3 half hour sitcom Soap on a Rope at 19:30. The comedy stars Luthuli Dlamini, Melanie du Bois, Alfred Ntombela and Sonia Sedibe and is set on a fictitious TV show’s set.

Late night changes

Days of Our Lives on SABC3 is moving from midnight to an earlier timeslot of 22:30 from 3 April. 

The late night Isidingo and The Bold and the Beautiful repeats are dumped in favour of the German TV news service Deutsche Welle that will now start at 23:30 and run until 02:00 in the morning.

From 02:00 the SABC’s feed of the SABC News channel on DStv will be simulcast overnight with the repeat of American TV series that used to be at 03:30 that’s all getting axed in the latest shake-up.

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