If this doesn't count as a national comedy crisis not much does: the rebroadcast of the lightweight sitcom Cuts II at 22h30 on Thursdays on SABC1 is the most popular comedy on South African television screens at the moment.
In Week 48 (26 November - 2 December) Cuts managed 2,508,700 viewers on average, almost half a million more than the next most popular comedy, Everybody Hates Chris II, which airs on Fridays at 19h00.
SABC2's local sitcom Stokvel was third on the top comedies list for the week, with 1,408,800 viewers, while e.tv's staples Becker and Friends rounded out the Top 5 comedies.
Cuts - a spinoff of the sitcom One on One, which also aired on SABC1 - revolves around a family business barbershop which gets sold to a large hair salon chain.
Prodigal son Kevin Barnes (Marques Houston) finds himself co-managing the shop and butting heads with the new owner’s spoiled daughter, Tiffany (Shannon Elizabeth), as they try to turn the barbershop into a success.
With differing ideas about how to make the shop a success, these two new partners find themselves in a battle of the sexes.
Cuts may be the top comedy but it was unable to crack SABC1's overall Top 10 shows in Week 48. Gone are the glory days of local sitcoms like City Ses'la and Izoso Connexion, which regularly managed up to four-million viewers and a spot in the channel's Top 3 shows.
Clearly SABC1 viewers prefer homebrewed comedies to international ones, although why they prefer Cuts to Everybody Hates Chris is anybody's guess.
Local sitcoms are a little thin at the moment, with the award-winning Stokvel on SABC2 still the pick of the bunch. The channel is currently the strongest in terms of local comedy, offering the Evita Bezuidenhout comedy Dinner with the President and the Afrikaans sketch show Kompleks as well.
SABC3's horrendous FONT is hardly chalking up record viewership figures (366,662 viewers in Week 48), while neither SABC1, e.tv nor M-Net have local comedies.
M-Net is launching Coconuts in January, but we aren't holding our breath.
So where's the funny? It's no laughing matter.
TVSA has compiled the Top 10 Shows per channel viewing figures for Week 48, as well as the Top 5 shows in a number of genres across all channels, using the TAMS Ratings provided by SAARF (The South African Advertising Research Council).
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To find out how TVSA calculates the viewership figures, go here:
The Primetime TV Viewing Figures Explained
For previous weeks, go here:
Primetime TV Viewing Figures
For the full Week 48 listings, go here: Week 48:
26 November - 2 December