Is #RealTalkOn3 getting cancelled?

Save for a few tweets from entertainment journalist and commentator Phil Mphela and the response to the tweets, the public is relatively quiet with regards to news about SABC 3’s flagship talkshow, Real Talk on 3, getting cancelled.

According to Mphela the channel will not be renewing the show for another season once the current season ends.

“The show’s current season will end in October but the channel will extend the contract to March 2019 and then the show ends,” wrote Mphela.

The channel tells me:

“In March 2019 they are rethinking and rebranding the channel, talkshows will be part of that but they are not at this stage planning to continue with Real Talk.”

— Phil Mphela (@PhilMphela) September 28, 2018

He went on to add that he has it on good authority that this change is due to a new direction that the channel wishes to take in the coming months.

The show recently welcomed a new host in the form of Azania Mosaka, who took over from Anele Mdoda when she left the show in May.

Mosaka enjoyed a lot of positive feedback from viewers of the show, even amidst resistance from Anele loyalists.

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The show, which was initially introduced as part of SABC 3’s major push for presenting local content, struggled to draw viewers as it never even made it into the top 20 most watched shows on the channel by August.

The channel also recently lost its channel head Aisha Mohamed, who reportedly left to go fill a position at Sony Music.

According to a recent report published by Channel24, there are “big changes” on the cards for SABC 3 and its sister channel SABC 2, which have suffered serious losses in viewership in recent years.

SABC’s group executive for television Nomsa Philiso told parliament on Tuesday  that the SABC is working on reversing the viewership slides at these channels, reports Channel24.

“In terms of SABC3 we want to continue to reflect a diverse racial grouping and also put in from a programming point of view, look at reality, we want to look at new dramas, and we also want to have magazine shows that are more of an emotainment nature where we are going to be able to talk about self-improvement of people, because that’s what sells at the moment,” said Philiso.

She also hinted at changes in programming in the coming months.

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