SOUTH Africa's newest 24-hour news channel got off to a blunderingly bad start on Wednesday - and it's only been downhill since then.

The Gupta family's African News Network7 (ANN7) has managed to unseat the SABC News channel from the "worst ever launch" throne.

Between lead anchor Gerry Elsdon's distracting twin peaks, dead air, background noise, grimacing presenters, awkward silences and abrupt outtakes, the twitterverse has had a field day dissing the news channel.

Yesterday morning, Elsdon shared the studio's red couch with an executive from their group for some back-patting and to explain away the "technical glitches".

Unfortunately, viewers were not privy to that information as the executive's microphone was off for most of it.

On YouTube, a video of the debut Game On! show featuring two women anchors has provided some of the best laugh-out-loud moments, garnering more than 170000 views in about 72 hours.

The women on the channel, whose names are hardly put on screen, seem to have been chosen less for skill and more for looks.

The news readers stumble and blurt their way through bulletins as if English is a foreign language, while inserts are unceremoniously cut to show startled presenters scrambling for improv dialogue when they are not pausing awkwardly.

The weather reporter, when not twirling like a beauty pageant contestant, informed viewers about temperatures in the "Mother City, Joburg".

What twelebs had to say...

@MarkPilgrimZA: WTF? Having done a lot of live TV myself, I'm quite forgiving when there's blunders, but THIS is so bad.

@DalenLance: 24hr news content is on a loop & each host thus has @least 5 live reads p/day. The stumbling is there4 inexcusable for a skilled host.

@ThabisoMosia: I know how tough a start-up can be and hence I've been quiet, but misspelling Kaizer Chiefs the whole morning is just wrong, very wrong.

@RanjeniM: That's what's wrong! They have construction workers running this broadcast, according to Jimmy Manyi.

@MaxduPreez: What is a Gupta without a dancing Zulu? Watching the launch of #ANN7