RATINGS: Free to air news and actuality highlights for February 2017

News bulletins:

• Xhosa News (SABC1): 4.123 million viewers
• Zulu News (SABC1): 4.061 million viewers
• Siswati/Ndebele News(SABC1): 2.459 million viewers
• eNewsDirect Headlines Sunday (etv): 2.166 million viewers
• Afrikaans News (SABC2): 1.802 million viewers
• Sesotho/Setswana/Sepedi News (SABC2): 1.311 million viewers
• English News (SABC3): 893 617 viewers

Actuality programming:

• Speak Out (SABC2): 2.586 million viewers
• No other actuality show (Special Assignment, Checkpoint, etc) made the top 20 of their respective channels.

Documentaries:

• Now or Never  (SABC1): 2.848 million viewers
• African River Goddess (SABC2): 1.265 million viewers
• The Last Lioness (SABC3): 788 111 viewers
• The Cheetah Diaries (SABC3): 726 762 viewers
• Saving Rhino (SABC3): 588 471 viewers

Stray observations:

• Thanks to Generations airing on SABC3 due to AFCON, Top Billing experienced an extreme spike in viewership due to Generations viewers staying behind, pulling nearly triple of Top Billing's usual audience (usually in the 600 000 range), with 1.6 million viewers).high-qualityquality lead ins due to SABC1's shows being broadcast on other channels led to some rather weird audience retentions. For example, by having Skeem Saam air before it, 7de Laan had a rather good month. Who woould have known those two shows could have audience overlap? 
• The Metro FM Music Awards performed well once again, attracting an average of 4.17 million viewers  over its three hour broadcast on a Saturday night.