I can be first to reveal that just over two months since On Digital Media (ODM) started their TopTV pay TV service in May with 55 TV channels in South Africa, those channels are now being measured for their viewership.
The available TopTV bouquet channels are now being included by the South African Advertising Research Foundation (Saarf) in their TAMS system used for measuring South African TV viewership - South Africa's official TV ratings currency. The first proper and official TopTV viewership numbers, trends, patterns and general TopTV viewership information should be available soon.
Here's some interesting titbits I can report first. In the new AMPS questionnaire DStv Lite, the latest MultiChoice channel bouquet has now been included as an option. The introduction of TopTV makes the TV channel list extremely long and - according to Saarf - ''opens the potential for confusion between similarly named channels''. From now on respondents of the survey will only be shown the TV channels for the pay TV platforms they have access to in their homes, for instance if they have TopTV they will only get a TV list of those particular channels that are available.
