Is South Africa Becoming Obsessed with Broadcast Trials?

On March 3rd, South Africa, and the rest of the world, tuned in to the trial of Oscar Pistorius, a trial that made history by becoming the first ever South African trial to be broadcast in its entirety on television. As time progressed, the trial got prolonged for various reasons. But, instead of all the hype for the trial fuzzing out, it seemed to just increase as South Africans became increasingly obsessed by the trial.

In the courtroom itself, 40 seats are reserved for local media, 40 for foreign media, an overflow room for others and many more crowding outside.

The proceedings of the trial are covered on so many channels, they are spoilt for choice. There is the three news channels, eNCA, SABC News and ANN7, all of which carry the proceedings live and also all of which have their own daily wrap shows. The international channels carry proceedings live as well including CNN, Sky News (which has a nightly highlights show on trial days) and BBC World News are just as obssessed with the trial. Openview HD, South Africa's first commercial free-to-air satellite platform started Trial TV: The State vs Oscar Pistorius, a special channel dedicated to the trial that was to run daily until 6pm. Problem was, demand for the trial was so high and, after a large amount of requests, the platform extended its broadcast hours to well into the evening to allow viewers who cannot see the trial during the day the opportunity to catch  up at night. 

However, the most successful channel, by far, must be The Oscar Pistorius Trial, a Carte Blanche Channel on Multichoice's DStv platform. Though the channel was expected to be a success, the degree of success it has achieved has far exceeded expectations, drawing more than 190 000 viewers during live court times during the middle of the day, easily ranking as the most watched channel among DStv's over 100 channels on the platform.

This all excludes the success seen by various websites that broadcast the trial live, many of which see traffic numbers peak when court is in session.

But now it seems as if South Africans are finally realising that this trial wont last forever and are already looking at what trials could consume their attention in the future.

The first such one is the trial of Shrien Dewani, due to start later this year. The team behind the Oscar Pistorius channel on DStv have already polled viewers to gauge interest on whether they would watch that trial as well, a staggeringly large amount said yes.

But, as it seems as if  South Africa might be in for a change in their tv diet to include some court tv, the first channel to get ahead of the curve is surprisingly the SABC's SABC News, which now runs a daily half hour recap show at 9pm on the trial of Radovan Krejcir, hosted by Dumile Mateza. What makes this move more smart is placing this show in exactly the same slot occupied by the Oscar Pistorius trial when it is on, daily at 9pm, developing a sort of culture in which at 9pm viewers are to make appointment viewing for the broadcast proceedings of a trial, no matter who the trial may be about, but they know that at that time, there will be trial tv to watch.

The next few months will be interesting to see exactly where the broadcasters go with broadcasting  trials when the Oscar Pistorius trial finally ends.