BREAKING. 53% of South Africans believe that there's currently more good TV content to watch than what there used to be.

While South Africans complain about roads and draconian e-tolls, schools without textbooks, rampant crime, a terrible natonal soccer team and expensive electricity, there's one thing which they're saying is actually getting better: television.

According to a groundbreaking new qualitative study from Discovery Networks, The Rise of the TV Audience Everywhere Audience, done across 10 countries including South Africa in the Central Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa (CEEMEA) region and looking at the changing nature of TV consumption, 53% of South Africans (40% agree; another 13% strongly agree) that there's more good TV content to watch today on television than what there used to be.

A quarter (25%) felt that the amount of good TV content in South Africa has neither increased nor decreased, while 23% said there's less good TV content available to South Africans. The research by Discovery Insights, the research division of the global factual entertainment content creator, was carried out in May and June this year.

The exhaustive research for the 60 page report looked for clues and analysed the behaviour of thousands of TV viewers for indicators of how TV watching is evolving and the radical trends and changes digital technology and social media are having on people's viewing habits.

While South Africa's struggling public broadcaster, the SABC, came close to the brink of financial collapse in 2009 and is still limping along with three public access TV channels often derided by the public for old content and rebroadcasts, the country has seen a flurry of activity in new start-up community TV stations.

Meanwhile e.tv as the sole commercial free-to-air broadcaster keeps winning viewers and video-on-demand (VOD) services like DStv BoxOffice started and are very successful. MultiChoice's DStv pay-TV platform keeps up its massive growth in new subscribers and On Digital Media's (ODM) TopTV - although struggling - has thousands of new subscribers as well.

All of the new broadcasters and additional channels mean more options and more TV content for South African viewers than ever before who can now, at any given time of the day, hopefully find something worth watching.


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