The eNews channel, part of the multi-billion rand terrestrial broadcasting company Sabido, is set to relaunch as the eNews Channel Africa (eNCA).
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Memeburn can reveal that the rebranding was in part influenced by the need for a short, simple domain as the broadcaster looks to launch a digital presence.
eNews group head Patrick Conroy confirmed the rebrand on Twitter, adding that it the change was needed in order to avoid confusion as the channel expands its international offering.
@jdrsampson eNews Channel Africa, eNCA. Need acronym to travel internationally. ‘eNews’ confused with E! and other brands.— Patrick Conroy (@PatrickConroySA) August 16, 2012
The independent news channel recently announced that it would be expanding its offering into the UK on the Sky satellite TV platform.
According to Conroy, “finding the right domain name that could match a partial name change was a challenge”.
“Launching a new brand now is difficult, particularly if you want a short three-letter domain,” he said. “For strategic reasons, and because of the brand equity vested in the ‘e’ in our name, we did not want to rebrand completely to a new name”.
Memeburn understands that eNews has rights to both the .co.za and .com domains for eNCA.
Conroy added that he would advise anyone starting a business to “think ahead and plan to launch sub-brands or divisions as fully fledged businesses with their own digital properties”.
Plans for the online presence have been in play for a few months now, with eNews bringing in well-known online veteran Tim Spira to head up the new operation.
Spira’s previous experience includes time spent as the publisher of the Naspers-owned Finweek magazine and fin24.com, one of the top business sites in the country. He was also part of an early online publishing business, iafrica.com.
During on-air signoffs, anchors and reporters will no longer use the term eNews. Instead they will sound out the individual letters of the service’s acronym.
The new eNCA brand will officially launch tomorrow.
