RATINGS: 24 hour news channels for April

As seen above, here are the audience shares for the 24 hour news channels on DStv. Historically, it was eNCA's Patrick Conroy that took the brag and posted this image, but now that he doesn't manage the channel anymore, the new channel head posted the above private image for everyone to see.

As always, eNCA continues to hold above half of the market share, meaning that out of every two people watching news on DStv, one is watching eNCA. Looking at the comparison table, we can see that eNCA was actually below 50% in the preceding motnh, which is something I don't recall seeing before.

Both ANN7 and SABC News Channel are slowly building an audience as both channels are up quite a bit from a year ago.

However, we can see that though SABC News Channel and ANN7 grew, this growth has not been coming at the expense of eNCA. Instead, the international news and business news channels are suffering instead with all of them down sharply from what they were doing late last year when interest in the American election was high.

What should be most concerning is the absolutely poor performance from local business news channels. When it comes to Al Jazeera or BBC World News, they are okay with having such low viewership because their channels are available all around the world on different platforms to make up for poor performance in one location.

However, neither CNBC Africa or Business Day TV has the same cushion to protect them: DStv viewership is all they have and when no one watches them on DStv, there is no one watching them anywhere in the world.

RATINGS: March2016 Free to air Highlights

Below are the peak viewership figures for South Africa's free toair news bulletins:

• Zulu News (SABC1, 7pm): 4.324million
• Xhisa News (SABC1, 7pm): 4.181 million
• eNews Direct Headlines (Sunday 6pm) 2.542 million 
•  Afrikaans News (SABC2, 6:30pm) 1.334 million
• Seswati, Setswana, Sepedi news (SABC2, 8pm) 1.215 million
• Venda, Tsonga News (SABC2, 5:30pm) 928 145
• English News (SABC3, 6pm) 756 753 

Actuality/Documentary  Highights:

• Speak Out (SABC2, Thursdays 9:30pm) 2.86 million 
•  Return of the White Lion (SABC3, Sunday 5:30pm) 715330
• Feast of the Predators (SABC3, Sunday 5:30pm) 662961
• Dolphin Army (SABC3, Sunday 5:30pm) 658813

(Remember that SABC3 and SABC2 tweaked their schedules at the start of the month)

RATINGS: 2017 State of the Nation Address

The annual State of the Nation Address was delivered by President Zuma on Thursday, 9 February.

SABC2's broadcast, which aired from 17:55 to 22:10 averaged a healthy 2.599 million viewers over the four hours and fifteen minutes. This is above what the channel would normally have averaged in that time period had they aired a traditional prime time lineup.

Though the Address was carried live on etv as well, the Address did not make the cut for that channel's top 20 programmes for the month of February.

South Africa's most watched news channel, eNCA, provided wall to wall coverage on the day. This, coupled with the fact that eNCA and 'Annika Larsen' were trending on Twitter for all the wrong reasons led to that channel pulling a massive  371 151 viewership average from 6pm to 11pm. I cannot back this up, but I do suspect this might be eNCA's highest rated block of programming in the channel's nine-year history.

The State of the Nation Address was broadcast live on SABC2, etv, eNCA, SABC News Channel, ANN7, The Parliamentary Service, CNBC Africa and Islam TV. However, viewership is not publicly available for the smaller broadcasters due to them not making the top 30 broadcasts for DStv during the month.

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.

RATINGS: January 2017 news and actuality free to air highlights

Below are the viewership figures for the free to air news bulletins in January:

• Xhosa news (SABC1, 7pm): 3,95 million 
• Zulu news (SABC1, 7pm): 3.86 million
• Afrikaans news (SABC2, 7:30pm): 2.11 million 
• eNews Diect Headlines (etv, 6pm Sundays): 2.07 million
• Multilingual news (SABC2, 6pm): 1.80 million
• English News (SABC3, 6:30pm): 719 951

Actuality highlights:

• Speak Out (SABC2, 9:30pm Thursday):  3.10 million
•  Zwa Maramani (SABC2, 8pm, Tuesday): 2.79 million
• Ngula Yavutivi (SABC2, 8pm, Tuesday); 1.72 million

Stray observations:

• The announcement of the matric results on SABC1 did quite well, attracting 3.73 million viewers on average over its 69 minute broadcast.
• Not one AFCON match made SABC1's top 20 broadcasts. In addition, viewers finding that their shows were displaced tuned in elsewhere with quite a few competing shows seeing spikes in their viewership as viewers turn away from Afcon. These include 7de Laan who had a peak viewership of 2.7 million, up greatly from the 1.6 million peak a month earlier.
  Also, as seen above, news bulletins airing on channels other than SABC1 did very well compared to standard viewership.
  But perhaps  the biggest loss SABC1 suffered as a result of AFCON was the massive void left by Generations not airing at 8pm which created a free for all for other channels who even saw some shows doubling viewership in that slot.

RATINGS: December 2016 Highlights

Below are the free to air news highlights from the free to air channels:

• Zulu news (SABC1, 7pm)3.94 million
• Xhosa news (SABC1, 7pm) 3.51 million
• eNews Direct Headlines (etv , 6pm Sunday) 2.25 million viewers
• Afrikaans news (SABC2, 7:30pm) 1.31 million viewers
• English News (SABC3, 6:30pm) 672 000

• Actuality show, Speak Out, continues to do well for SABC2, attracting an impressive 3.15 million viewers. Though the show usually does well, its success this month seemed to come down to its lead in, Muvhango, having an absolutely impressive run in December, peaking at over 6 million viewers. 
• A documentary based on the life of the late Cuban leader, Fidel Castro, did quite well on SABC1, pulling 2.82 million viewers.
• When Duty Calls, the actality show on SABC2 that focuses on crime, is doing well in the late 10pm slot, netting 1.28 million vierws.

• An airing of  the movie, Mandela: Long Walk To Freedom, did quite well on etv, pulling 2.13 million viewers. Though it is not etv's highest rated movie for the month (which attracted an additional 300 000 viewers), the viewership, which is an average based on the entire runtime of the movie, is impressive based on the film'd long run time of three hours. 

For previous posts, use the Ratings label below

RATINGS: November 2016 free to air highlights

Below are the most watched free to air news bulletins for the month of November:

• Xhosa News (SABC1): 3 802 629
• Zulu News (SABC1): 3 757194
• eNews Direct Headlines (etv): 2 291 601
• eNews Direct [Sunday broadcast] (etv): 2 095 938
• Afrikaans News (SABC2): 1 483 336
• English News (SABC3): 699 735

RATINGS: October DStv news channels

Courtesy once more of Patrick Conroy's Twitter account (even though he no longer works at eNCA), here are the audience shares for DStv's news channels:

The biggest observation from this is the three channels that pulled a 0% audience share. Having three channels have 0% pulls the credibility of the whole audience measurement poll into question. One has to wonder whether the sample size used for these polls are large enough and, more important, reflective enough of the demographics of DStv viewers. DStv has been growing rapidly in recent years, which has meant rapid changes in the demopgraphics of subscribers. Whether these changes are captured in this data is now highly questionable.

Ignoring the above, here are the highlights:

• eNCA is once again comfortably holding more than half of the audience share. 
• SABC News Channel is getting closer and closer to getting to that 20% mark. The channel's slight tweaks and highly simplified schedule is starting to payoff well.
• Thanks to the circus of the US elections inching close to its peak in October, along with multiple debates, CNN just shot up rapidly to third place, just below 10%, which I would think is near to an all time best for the channel since the 2013 expansion of the domestic news channel offering.
• ANN7's audience share for October worryingly declined. Why is it worrying? The channel's South African of the Year Awards show, which usually leads to a ratings bump did nothing. Personally, I think this is a result of the Awards being branded very poorly this year (Dropping the elegent and understandable 'I Am South African' brand in favour of the cheap sounding and appearing 'SATY Daily Show') and weakly scheduled.
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RATNGS: October free to air hghlights

That time of the month again when we get to look back at the prior month's news and actuality ratings highlights:

• Once again the SABC's Xhosa news topped the list, pulling 4.15 million viewers at its peak.
• The Zulu news bulletin (SABC1) is on its tail as always, pulling 4.07 million viewers.
• The next most watched news bulletin, in a distant third, is SABC2's Afrikaans news bulletin with 1.3 million viewers.
• SABC2's 6:30pm multilingual news bulletin is next, with 1.15 million viewers. 
• SABC3's English news bulletin continues to build an audience, now pulling 922 000 viewers at peak. 
• The one minute eNews Direct Headlines on Sunday evenings continue to pull strong numbers for etv, attracting a bit more than 2.6 million viewers at its peak. 
• For the frst time in its history, the standard half-hour edition of eNews Direct, though the Sunday edition only, featured on etv's most watched programmes list. This is a direct result of being sandwiched between the SA Got Talent performance show and results show, both of which pull in excess of 3 million viewers. This eNews Direct bulletin pulled 2.087 million viewers, making it the third most watched news bulletin.
  

• Speak Out continues to be the country's most watched actuality attracting a peak of 2.346 million viewers.

Stray observations:

• DStv had an open weekend for their three main series channels, M-Net, M-Net Edge and Vuzu Amp. Not one channel saw a bump in viewership.
• An American music awards show disguised as an African one, the MTV Africa Music Awards, aired in October. However because it aired across three tv channel's (MTV, MTV Base and on tape delay on etv), it did not make the most watched list for DStv nor etv. News channel ANN7 s hosting their South African of the Year Awards this month. Lets see if they can make the list. 

RATINGS: September free to air highlights

Below are the news and actuality programming highlights for free to air broadcasts for September:

• The Xhosa news bulletin on SABC1 once again led the pack, peaking at 4.28 million viewers, with the Zulu News bulletin at 4.17 million viewers.
• The most watched news bulletin on SABC2, pulling slightly more than 1.4 million viewers. No other news bulletin on the channel made the channel's top 20 list.
• SABC3's most watched bulletin, the SABC's main English one, pulled just under 667 000 viewers.
• [In the official records on the Broadcast Research Council, an episode of Rythm City is incorrectly labelled as eNews Direct.]
• The two minute weekend editions of eNews Direct continues to benefit from its strong WWE lead in, peaking at an impressive 3.28 million viewers.

• SABC2's actuality programming continues its strong form with Speak Out peaking at 2.5 million viewers, When Duty Calls pulling 1.3 million viewers and Ngula Yavutivi with 1.3 million viewers. 

RATINGS: August free to air news highlights

• The Xhosa news and Zulu news on SABC1 continues to lead the pack by far, averaging 4.53 million and 4.51 million viewers, respectively.
• On SABC2, consumer affairs show, Speak Out had a strong month once again, with its premiere episodes capping at 2.3 million viewers whilst its reruns finished a strong 2.1 million viewers. Yes, a rerun beat most of the rest of SABC2's lineup and all of SABC3's programming.
• The news bulletins on SABC2 seem to be recovering from their timeslot shifts with the Afrikaans news pulling a peak of 1.499 million viewers, with the multilingual bulletin (as always, there is absolutely no reason why three languages should be sharing one slot for news) not far behind with 1.47 million viewers.
• SABC3's English news bulletin pulled slightly more than 860 000 viewers for the month.
• The weekend editions of eNews Direct, well at least the one-minute bulletins that get the benefit of having a very strong WWE lead-in, averaged a very strong 2.5 million viewers for that single minute. The standard eNews Direct bulletin is yet to feature in the channel's top twenty programmes since its inception in January.
• A major point of concern is that in August 2016, a Municipal election took place here in South Africa (in case you forgot). The 30th most watched programme on DStv pulled 189 000 viewers. No South African news channel, therefore, was able to pull at least that amount of viewership for any moment on an election day, a day when people are usually expected to flock to news broadcasts. Also, no election coverage charted on either SABC2 or etv, both of which aired election programming. Are South Africans getting their news from other places or just ignoring major news stories completely?
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Ratings courtesy of brcsa.org.za. Programming included is for prime time only, which is defined in South Africa as the time from 5:30pm to 10:00pm. Ratings are for viewers fifteen and older only. 

RATINGS: July 2016 News and actuality highlights

• As usual, the Zulu news and the Xhosa on SABC1 were on top, by far. The Zulu bulletin pulled 4.4 million viewers with the Xhosa one pulling 4.3 million viewers.
• Current affairs programme, Speak Out was SABC2's biggest news and actuality show, pulling in 2.1 million viewers.
• The top news bulletin on SABC2 was the Afrikaans news which was able to draw 1.43 million viewers, which is on par with its June viewership. What makes this more impressive is that the bulletin moved half hour later in July. However, unlike the last time when the buletin moved to 7:30pm (and viewership dipped), the bulletin now had the benefit of its traditional lead in, 7de Laan, too moving half hour later so viewers could keep their traditional Afrikaans hour as is, just slightly later.
• The multilingual news bulletin (something that shouldn't exist under 90% local because there is absolutely no reason why these languages can't get equal time like the others) drew 1.36 million viewers, down 300 000 viewers from June.
• The documentary show that just doesn't die, 50/50, somehow still manages 1.2 million viewers after all these years.
• The English news bulletin on SABC3 continues to build an audience , drawing 870 000 viewers in July.
• The long-struggling Afternoon Express pulled an impressive 730 000 viewers as a result of being on air an hour later at 5pm, which is essentially an early evening hour, but okay.
• The 6pm Headlines edition of eNews Direct continues to benefit from its WWE lead in, pulling over 2.5 million viewers on the weekends. The usual weekday edition still struggles though, not cracking the channels top 20 programming.
• DSTV's top 30 programmes now get released on one list and not one news programme made the platform's top 30. Not Carte Blanche. Nothing on eNCA, on any news channel. Not one of Kyknet's million news and actuality programmes. Not even a sports news programme. nothing.  For perspective, the 30th ranked programme, an Africa Magic movie, pulled 219 000 viewer.

RATINGS: DStv news channels for 4-10 July

Thanks to Haranth Ghosh of ANN7, we get the below glimpse into what the average viewership is like for DStv's news channels, even if its only for a few days :


Though we had previously seen audience share, this is the first time we get to see the actual viewership figures.

One major criticism that I have to mention is that the measurement is done out of sync with the domestic news channels (and by far the largest news channels): The domestic news channels run from 6am to midnight, whilst this measurement is from 5am-11pm, leaving an hour of premiering content out, but including repeat content.

Just to quickly explain the graph: the first column describes the channel's total audience share when compared to every tv channel in the country. The obvious reason why these figures are so small is because these news channels are available in about 5 million homes (I will analyse this figure in the next paragraph), most of which has over 60 tv channels, whereas a major channel like SABC1 is available in excess of 20 million homes (I do not have the actual figure, but its much higher than 20 million), most of which only has 5 tv channels (the three SABC channels, eTV and the community channel in that area).
The next column is the actual viewership. A bit of math reveals the coutry's average amount of tv viewers across all channels is just under 17 million viewers at a given time, on average.
The final column is the percentage of audience share among news channels only.

From the above we can see that eNCA continues to average over 50% of the market share (Recently revealed stats show its the 6th most watched channel on all of DStv). What makes this figure even more impressive is that eNCA is available in only about 2.5 million households compared to 5 million for SABC News Channel and ANN7. In Naspers' (DStv's parent company) recent results, it showed that roughly 50% of DStv subscribers are collectively on DStv Premium, Compact and Extra, equating to about 2.5 million viewers and eNCA is available only on these bouquets, compared to all bouquets for the other domestic news channels.

The race to second place is heating up with SABC News Channels' viewership share seemingly stagnating while ANN7 is now on its heels.

For some odd reason, British news channel, Sky News, is in a close fourth place, whilst CNN has a marginal lead among international channels.

These viewership figures will get more interesting as the local elections approach.

[NOTE: These viewership figures include those watching on DStv in South Africa only. It excludes eNCA's viewers in the rest of Southern Africa and online, SABC News Channel's viewership in the rest of the continent, and ANN7's online viewership]

RATINGS: June free to air highlights

SABC1

• The Xhosa news continues to be the most watched local news bulletin at 4.4 million viewers 
• The Zulu bulletin remains on its tail at 4.3 million viewers. 

SABC2

• The multilingual new bulletin at 6pm continues to be the channels top news bulletin, with its most viewed episode averaging 1.69 million viewers. From this month, this bulletin moves half an hour later.
• The Afrikaans news bulletin pulled 1.47 million viewers. It too moves half hour later this month.
• Afrikaans actuality show, Fokus, pulled 1.16  million viewers. it also moves timeslots this month. 

SABC3

• In a perfect example of slow and steady wins the race, the English bulletin that used to pull 400 000 viewers a few years back now averages just under double that. 
• Actuality show, Special Assignment, pulled 500 000 viewers.

etv

• The Sunday edition of eNew sDirect Headlines continues to make the most of its huge WWE Raw lead in rating, averaging 2.9 million viewers in June. In fact, it is by far the highest rated English bulletin in the  country. 
• That was the only news and actuality show to make etv's top 20. The rest of the list is just local series and international movies (and wrestling, don't forget that). 

It seems to have been a poor onth for actuality shows (or just a strong month for everything else). Usual strong performing shows like Checkpoint and Speak Out, among others, did not feature in their respective channel's top 20 at all. The shows that did chart like Special Assignment, underperformed as well. 

RATINGS: May's free to air highlights

Below are some highlights of tv ratings for news and actuality programming in May:

• SABC1's Xhosa news bulletin and their Zulu news bulletin still leads the pack by wide margins, averaging 4.5 million and 4.2 million viewers during the month, respectively.
• SABC2's Speak Out continues to be the top rated current affairs program in the country, averaging 2.4 million viewers during the month. The show also does well on Twitter when it airs, usually occupying the number one trend spot in the country.
• SABC2's Afrikaans news bulletin pulled a healthy 1.57 million viewers whilst their 6pm multilingual bulletin pulled in 1.54 million viewers. I know I say this often, but I will say it again: there is absolutely no reason why three official languages should be squeezed into one thirty minute slot.
• The English news bulletin on SABC3 continues its slow climb in total viewers with 865 000 viewers for the month (I remember times when it averaged below 600 000).
• For etv, the one minute 'eNews Direct Headlines' continues to benefit from its WWE lead in, averaging a whopping 2.7 million viewers for the month. However, the main eNews Direct bulletin 

• On Vuzu, the daily entertainment news bulletin, VEntertainment averages 67 000 viewers for the month. However, just to repeat again, this is viewers for Vuzu (DStv 116) only and excludes viewers watching  on the High Definition Vuzu AMP.

Ratings updates: News channels for April

Courtesy once again of Patrick Conroy's Twitter account, here are the viewership share for the news channels broadcasting on the DStv platform.

Just a few observations:

• It seems as if the competition between UK news channel, Sky News, and South African news channel, ANN7, for third place is over now, with Sky solidly in third place. However, ANN7 is up decently from the prior month. 
• Month on month, BBC World News' audience share plummeted by 40%, which is rather sharp.
• The wall to wall American election coverage is paying off greatly for CNN, pulling ahead of the other two international news channels, BBC World News and Al Jazeera decently.

As always, when it comes to analysing these figures, it reflects the slice of the pie and not the size of the pie itself. 

RATINGS: Free to Air Highlights from March

Below are the news  and actuality programming highlights from the free to air channels (and a few from more popular DStv channels):
etv

• Benefiting from its lead in of the popular WWE Raw, eNews Direct Headlines on Sunday evenings continue to average over 2 million viewers in its two minute slot at 6pm. This on the heels of the channel's desire to move the under performing weekday edition out of prime time.
• In what was a very strong month for the independent broadcaster, no other news or actuality show made the channel's top 20 programming for the month.

MNet

• Carte Blanche continues to be the channel's strongest regularly schedule program, with its nearly 218 000 viewers beating out The Voice South Africa for the channel's top spot.

SABC1

• Both the Xhosa and Zulu news bulletins continue to do exceptionally well for the channel, averaging over 4 million viewers each. To put that into perspective, the only tv shows on free to air television other than on SABC1 that are beating these news bulletins are Muvhango (SABC2) and Scandal (etv).

SABC2

• Consumer rights show, Speak Out, was the number one actuality show on SABC 2, averaging over 2.7 million viewers for the month.
• The daily Afrikaans news bulletin averaged just over 1.6 million viewers.
• Ayanda-Allie Paine's Visionaries Lounge, which got off to a slow start, now averages over 1.5 million viewers.
• Daily live youth show, Hectic Nine-9, the most watched youth show in the country, averaged 1.37 million viewers for the month.
• The recently moved Sesotho and Setswana and Sepedi news bulletin now averages 1.3 million viewers in the historically weak 6pm slot on SABC2,

SABC3

• The daily English news bulletins continues to average just over 800 000 viewers.

Extra

• V Entertainment on Vuzu averaged just over 70 000 viewers for the month of March, the last month featuring Denise Zimba and Shelton Forbes before the introduction of the now negatively reviewed "#Vuzu5". It is important to remember that this vewership excludes viewers watching on the DStv Premium-only Vuzu Amp channel. 

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. 

Which news channel was the most watched for the month of February?

February was a busy month for South African news channels with both the State of the Nation Address and the Budget Speech taking place.

However, only eNCA saw an increase in audience share among South African news channels, keeping the channel at above 50%.

Interesting thing to note: Sky News is available in the least amount of homes of all news channels (only available in homes with DStv Extra and DStv Premium) yet is still able to hold on to a sizable audience share.

[As always, this graph is courtesy of Patrick Conroy's Twitter account. He tweeted that this was his leaving gift from his team at eNCA. He now heads OpenViewHD]

RATINGS: Which News Channels Were the Most Watched for the Month Of October in South Africa?

Courtesy once again of Patrick Conroy, we now have yet another glimpse into the world of which news channel is watched the most in South Africa and DStv.

Business Channels First:
CNBC Africa has once again overtaken Business Day TV as the most watched Business News channel in the country (1.68% compared to 0.52%). During the month of October, CNBC Africa aired the 3rd Republican Debate, though it did not send out programming advisories before hand. October also brought with it the Mid Term Budget Speech on the 21st of the month with the channel providing wall to wall coverage of the speech while Business Day TV was showing repeat content.
Compared to September, CNBC Africa is up 16% while Business Day TV's ratings went down double digits, month on month.

International News Channels next and in a month filled with US Politics news and unrest in the Middle East, CNN remains in first place, though its 4.04% share is down from the 5.69% in the prior month when it had a Democrat Primary Debate on its schedule which aired live and repeated in prime time.
They are followed by Al Jazeera English and BBC World News. Combined, one in ten viewers who watched a news channel in South Africa opted to watch an international one.

Now things get interesting...
Before I continue, I want to just put a bit of context into the Month of October 2015 in South African news with a single hashtag: #FeesMustFall. Yip, that happened during October and the graph above is a perfect indicator of which channel South Africans prefer when deciding where to turn for major domestic breaking news issues.

Firstly, ANN7. The downside: In a month with a major breaking news story in South Africa that developed over a number of days, if not weeks, to which the channel dedicated a large deal of resources, Sky News, a British news channel, was watched by more South Africans than a South African news channel.  More so, the channel also aired the South African of the Year Awards during October, an event that was trending on top of Twitter's list for most of that evening.
The upside? The channel's ratings were up 14% compared to September of this year, which is a large margin.
At this point, something has got to give at the channel. They have certain bright spots, for example the in depth analysis on ANN7 Prime and the quality of GameOn! is something often spoke about, but the rest of the channel's lineup need to see a step up in quality to remain relevant.
What's more, Sky News is available on DStv Premium and Extra only whereas ANN7 is available on absolutely all DStv bouquets including the R39 Easy View as well as Commercial packages.

In the same news climate as the above, SABC News saw their ratings decrease by just over 7% during October 2015. The channel's coverage, or lack thereof, of of the #FeesMustFall movement has been widely criticized and the South African public has made their voices heard by tuning out.

With absolutely spectacular coverage of the movement, eNCA remains more than comfortable at the top of the news mountain on DStv. The audience share was up a whopping 15%  compared to September, proving that quality coverage indeed leads to quantity in terms of viewership figures. The channel also trended on Twitter alongside #FreesMustFall and traffic to their website was up during the month of October.





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