Top Shows on TV: January 2020

Written by TVSA Team from the blog Primetime TV Viewing Figures on 18 Feb 2020
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These are the primetime adult television viewing figures for January 2020:

If you can't see the listing below, then click this link to access them in a document instead: Top Shows on TV: January 2020

Special notes:

When Eskom takes everything, including our favourite shows

South Africa's rolling blackouts hit the country's top shows hard in January, with the Big Four losing a terrible total of 3.5 million viewers between them since November.

Here's an overview of the difference in the numbers for their most popular episodes between November 2019 (before the critical meltdown of Stage 6) and the rolling blackouts of January 2020:

Show	Nov 2019 Viewership	Nov 2019 Audience Share	Jan 2020 Viewership	Jan 2020 Audience Share	Decline
Uzalo (20h30)	10,072,999	67.8	9,308,207	69.1	764,792
Generations (20h00)	8,994,656	64	7 993 895	62.6	1,000,761
Skeem Saam (18h30)	6,893,240	55.5	5,894,821	56	998,419
Scandal! (19h30)	5,643,731	40.3	4,829,111	41.3	814,620
					3,578,592

Their numbers were lower in December too but this was also due to the festive season so the truly meaningful plunge is in January because there were no festive distractions - there was nothing festive about it!

The only explanation for these numbers is load shedding because each show's Audience Share remained stable between November and January.

This means that the shows didn't lose viewers to other shows or channels but rather the overall number of people watching TV at that time dropped substantially and resulted in the shows bleeding viewers.

The big damage happened to the four shows that always have the biggest viewership while other early evening soapies (e.g. Rhythm City, Isidingo and 7de Laan) were also down.

Interesting to note is that shows at 21h00 and later (The Queen and Imbewu) maintained their numbers for their most popular episode which suggests that even when the lights were on, people used the earlier part of their evenings to organise their lives around the chaos of load shedding.

Also important to note: These numbers only reflect the most popular episodes for each show during the month and not their average viewership for the month.

This means that load shedding very probably had an even bigger overall impact on shows than presented here because the Broadcast Research Council's numbers don't give an indication of what happened each night of the week.

Lithapo

Lithapo got off to healthy start at 21h30 on SABC2 despite the troubles. It's most popular episode aired in its debut week reaching 1,719,199 viewers, almost the exact same number as Giyani's premiere week when it reached 1,792,527.

Will it rise, fall or remain the same?

If you can't see the documents, here's an overview of the Top 5 shows per channel:

SABC1

Show	Viewers
Uzalo	9,308,207
Generations: The Legacy	7,993,895
Skeem Saam	5,894,821
Xhosa News	3,718,085
Zulu News	3,598,304

SABC2

Show	Viewers
Muvhango	4,675,183
Live Lotto Draw	2,517,927
7De Laan	1,821,380
Mopheme	1,818,097
Lithapo	1,719,199

SABC3

Show	Viewers
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen	1,014,162
Transformers:Age of Extinction	898,528
Isidingo:the Need	870,482
Test Match Cricket:South Africa vs Engla	681,326
Transformers:the Movie	620,294