Ratings Notes: February News Broadcasts on Free To Air Channels

Just thought I would share a bit of viewership highlights for the month of February:

• With 4.1 million viewers, SABC1's 7pm Zulu news bulletin is the most watched news programme in all the land. 40.4% of all people watching tv at 7pm in February were wathcing this news bulletin.
  
• Not far behind it, the Xhosa news bulletin, which shares its slot, averaged 3.99 million viewers.
  
• The eNews Direct Headlines on Sundays are doing quite well on eTV with 2.4 million viewers. However, most of these viewers are viewers that remain watching the channel after WWE Raw ends as there is no commercial break between the two programmes and their viewership is nearly identical. the usual eNews Direct bulletin with Duduzile Ramela failed to make the list (The lowest programme on eTV's list averaged 1.6 million viewers).
  
• Afrikaans News (SABC2): 1.4 million viewers
  
• English News (SABC3): 831 000 viewers
  
• It is an absolute shame that African langauge news broadcasts are so marginalised in South Africa even though most people in the country speak it as a home language and actually prefer to watch the news in their home language. These numbers prove that fact. There are 3 24/7 news channels in the country. There are 2 business news channels in the country that are on air for most of the work week. There is a parliamentary channel and a weather channel yet all these channels are 100% English. Whoever capitalises on this untapped market will surely be rich. 

ACTUALITY PROGRAMMING

• When Duty Calls (SABC2): 1.2 million viewers [Impressive numbers considering its timeslot]
• Speak Out (SABC2): 2.69 million viewers
  
• Carte Blanche (MNet): 296 281 viewers (In case)

SPECIALS

• The MetroFM Music Awards had 3.8 million viewers watching this year with a 48% audience share. Like last year, all ten Trending Topics on Twitter were about the awards show that evening.
  
• The State of the Nation Address coverage on SABC 2 averaged 2.47 million viewers from 6pm to 9:30pm. Remember, the President's actual speech took place after 7pm when these numbers must have skyrocketed, which is evident by the amount of viewers that remained to watch 7de Laan once the channel's coverage ended (3.2 million people watched the 9:30pm episode of 7de Laan, well above the show's usual 1.5 million viewers usually)
  I would really want the budget speech to be shown in primetime as well considering that affects more people's live than the SONA speech (for tax purposes and for high school economics project purposes), but asking free to air channels to clear their highly profitable prime time schedule for two nights in quick succession is probably asking for much.