Scandal! first aired in January 2005 and was a disruptor to South African television, as was the channel e.tv.
On Thursday, South African soapie Scandal! celebrated 5000 episodes, but the millstone comes after channel e.tv announced that it would be canning the show.
“As [a] channel, it’s not lost [on] us that these are human beings that we’re talking about. These are people with lives, with families…that’s not lost to us, ever,” said Head of Local Programming at e.tv Vuyelwa Booi.
Scandal! first aired in January 2005 and was a disruptor to South African television, as was the channel e.tv.
Booi, a former 7de Laan actress, said the cancellation of Scandal! wasn’t an easy decision.
“The difficult part for us as a broadcaster is that at the end of the day, this is also a business. It’s never nice to talk about it that way,” she said.
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A shift in the TV landscape
The long-running soapie joins a list of long-format shows like 7de Laan and Muvhango that have suffered the same fate in recent times.
“I do feel long-form is in trouble, simply because of the cell phone,” Scandal! producer Sanele Zulu tells The Citizen.
He says countries like China and the US have spearheaded this shift in how people consume television.
“There are really starting to tell stories for the vertical screen, the US has jumped onto it. I do feel there is a shift in terms of television and storytelling as a whole.”
The soapie’s final episode is expected to be in June 2026.
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Talks have been ongoing
Zulu said talks with the channel about the show’s end have been happening since 2021.
“If you look at the show since then, we’ve brought in new families and reinvented ourselves because of that,” he shares.
The producer says the show set a high bar during the period of rivalry between characters Mthunzi and Romeo.
“At the time, it was before Covid, our ARs [Audience Ratings] reached ridiculous numbers that no one has ever hit before and then when we hit Covid the viewership changed. Everybody struggled; we also struggled,” he shares.
“It’s just that now, what had happened was, it was a decision taken by channel with us as a production. They felt our stories and families were way too affluential, so we need to bring it down a bit hence why the building of Ethembeni and everybody is working class,” Zulu says.
“Not everybody liked it and we had to switch it up, cause now you can see again we’re back with the affluential side of things is picking up.”
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Viewers’ bond with characters
Despite their creative shift, Zulu says audiences have formed a bond with the less affluent storylines, appreciating life in Ethembeni.
“The ARs are climbing, it’s a tricky one,” he says, chuckling about a fickle audience.
Over the last 20 years, it has become one of the country’s most staple TV shows.
“To turn a shift around takes months. We are three months ahead, people are reacting to something now, and we know already [that] something else is coming that has the potential to turn the ship. But if we are not given an opportunity to let everything play out, it becomes weird, it becomes a knee-jerk reaction all the time.”
He gives an example of how the show recently announced that renowned actresses Camilla Waldman, Sonia Mbele, and Jo-Anne Reyneke would be joining the cast.
“Now we have new actors, the audience doesn’t care about these new people; they don’t have any relationship with these people. So in the thre [to] four months, only then do they build a relationship with them.”
