WeeklySA_AdminSLOT: The late-night satire radio show host shares his feelings about being in the right space in his latest endeavour…
By Priscilla Malinga
Monday night at 09pm is time to curl up on the sofa or bed to watch breaking or trending news – quite serious stuff of the day, yet delivered with an air of sarcasm by none other than Dan Corder, whose specialty is parodying politicians and celebrities on his current affairs and entertainment show.
Born and raised in Cape Town, Corder studied at University of Cape Town after passing his matric and cut his teeth in broadcasting at the campus radio station. He later got signed by the regional commercial radio in Cape Town called Good Hope FM and spent 6 years there.
Eventually he was on the Good Hope breakfast show, hosting it for a period of two years. He then moved to Johannesburg and worked at 5fm, where he manned a breakfast show slot for a period of three years. He also tried his hand in producing political material on Tik Tok but says he really blew up and dumped the idea. After that he started a YouTube channel doing the similar material and he called it “The issue with Don Corder”, culminating in the current night-time TV show at eNCa. In essence, the show is driven by his perspective of political developments of the day late night TV.
“Transitioning to TV was very easy” says Corder.
Compared to the sheer volume of content he was creating for the radio for nine years, he says the workload has not been heavy at all. He really enjoys it and enjoys writing as he is kind of obsessed with political satire humour and analysis jokes since he was about 18. He says this felt like something he always wanted to do. Also he has been fairly practising this style from Tik Tok and YouTube and it became easy to transform the content into TV.
Around March a lot of TV channels started calling him as they were interested in using his content for TV Shows. He had a bunch of interviews, meetings and plans and worked on another channel and it didn’t work out until he finally landed at eNCA. He pitched the night show and they approved it, which was wonderful, he says.
He is very thankful to ENCA for the opportunity as it is a hard news channel with some commentary shows and personality driven shows. But his specific style is not being done by anyone in the country except him. He is thankful to Etv for giving him an opportunity and a chance to do the show and it is working out so well as they are being rewarded for it.
How he chooses his content is he picks the news worthy topics that people are talking about or should be talking about. He reads the news for two to three hours a day, picking up on what’s interesting and important.
He says that he has been received well and people have been very kind to him, expressing their love for his show. He also gets people who want to work with him on the show and says that it is an indication that he must have made a good impression.
He never has off-days as there is always something to call about. The tagline of the show is ‘South Africa is a movie, welcome to the watch party’. It is diverse, wild and there is always a lot to talk about. Corder left radio to grow his career as he felt he had achieved all that he needed to achieve in the medium and needed more. And when the offer came, he knew he couldn’t do both anymore as they both took time.
The show is vibrant and exciting. Once captivated, the more one wants to see what will happen at the next show. He is entertaining to watch as he also brings in a bit of live performances to it.
This week, Nomcebo Zikode and a Jazz band called Kopano Jazz Collective gave a sterling live performance. As part of the audience, I will definitely be following it. It’s an engagingly informative, entertaining, educational and thought-provoking show. Catch it on ENCA at 21 to 22 pm every Monday.
