eNCA
By far the most impressive statistic seen in the graph is eNCA's ability to still boast more than half of the share of viewership (51%), despite the increased competition. Of all the news channels in South Africa, eNCA is the one that tweaks it schedule the least: while others have constantly changed their schedules, the eNCA schedule has been in place for long now. Its been well over a year since viewers have been tuning in to the excellent Uveka Rangappa and Dan Moyane in the morning to Jeremy Maggs and Iman Rappetti in the evening. The chemistry is there and so is the talent. Though I may not always be fond of their repetitive 30 minute format, it is that exact 30 minute format that keeps casual viewers tuning in: news at the top and bottom of the hour, sports 20 minutes later with weather near the end of the 30 minute cycle. It just works. Coupled with this is their excellent high quality live coverage of news events, particularly the Xenophobic outbreak that took place in April. The final part of their formula? A brand that is well known for news and not controversies like the other local news channels (for example, SABC News Channel being in the spot light due to the Eben Jansen saga), a brand that resonates with viewers that do not traditionally watch news. When news breaks, it is these casual viewers who help eNCA to stay at the top of the mountain.
SABC News Channel
SABC News Channel, now solidly in second place, a position it took from Sky News back when SABC News Channel was launched, itself has seen steady gains in viewership, growing from 9% in its first few months, to 17% in June last year (the last time Conroy gave us access to this information ) to now 19%. That is the good part. Now for the bad part: When compared to just the previous month (March, which can be seen in the table above) SABC News Channel is actually down 12% Why is that bad? April was a major news month in South Africa with the Xenophobic attacks, something that would drive people to watch news. Instead, when news breaks, it seems as if viewers are actually tuning out of the SABC News Channel to watch that breaking news elsewhere.
ANN7
South Africa's third most watched channel, ANN7, continues to see growth as they continue to tweak their lineup. In April the channel tweaked their late prime time schedule, introducing a repeat of Buzz @ANN7 in prime time, canning the repeat of the sports bulletin and a moving around of live news bulletins and then later in the month the introduction of a repeat of the daily Africa Tonight 90 minutes after the original airing. This is in addition to the introduction of new and returning magazine shows like The Torque Show, Face in the Crowd and a weekly interview show, Straight Talk, with Ralph Motshekga The channel has by far the most complicated lineup of the news channels and these constant changes don't make things any easier for viewers that want news on a news channel. Like eNCA, they also seemed to have benefitted from the heavy news cycle experienced in April, being up 3.5% since March.
CNBC Africa: What on Earth?
Like its American counterpart, CNBC Africa seems to be experiencing audience declines. Yes it is a niche channel and would therefore have low viewership, that is not the problem. The worrying part is that the channels audience share of "0%" is actually down from 2% seen 10 months ago, and also 2% in November 2013 (the only data that is publicly available). However, one has to keep in mind that this viewership is South African viewership only and excludes viewership for the rest of Africa where the channel is rather popular.
Other Channels
So with all the South African news channels experiencing audience share growth over the last few months, that growth must have came at the expense of some other channels. Sky News, CNN International and Al Jazeera are all down, with Sky News' 6% nearly half of what it was just a few months ago (11%)
For the statisticians out there, once again the viewership follows a normal sort of distribution when rearranged by channel numbers with eNCA at the peak in the middle with viewership then steadily dropping off the further you go from eNCA on either side of the channel spectrum.
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