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South African viewers and pay-TV subscribers tuned in in their hundreds of thousands for Friday and Saturday's exclusive sit-down interview over two days of the disgraced cyclist Lance Armstrong with Oprah Winfrey on TLC which led to a massive ratings spike as the viewership surged for the channel.
Oprah Winfrey is putting the TLC channel (DStv 172 / TopTV 453) on the TV map in South Africa like nothing else before in its two year history in the country and got hundreds of thousands of local pay-TV subscribers to click to the channel in unison with their remote controls this past Friday and Saturday in South Africa as well as across the Africa continent.
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Although combined viewership figures for the rest of Africa and other African countries and territories where TLC is shown on pay-TV line-ups are not available, the TV exclusive of Oprah's Next Chapter which Discovery Networks International (DNI) secured, clearly paid-off big time in luring viewers across the continent to tune in and keeping them spellbound with the cyclist's televised admission of doping.
The talk show queen's interview with Lance Armstrong this past Thursday and Friday lured a massive combined TV audience in excess of 342 275 viewers aged 15 and older in South Africa on MultiChoice's DStv platform alone, according to viewership figures from The South African Audience Research Foundation (Saarf). Saarf measures and compiles TV ratings in South Africa.
The Lance Armstrong confession on Oprah's Next Chapter drew a massive 220 405 viewers aged 15 and older (the currency of viewers who matter most to advertisers in South Africa) on Friday 18 January to TLC for part one of the interview. "On average 0.7% of adults aged 15+ who watched television on 18 January watched the Oprah and Lance Armstrong TV exclusive on TLC," says Saarf.
According to Saarf data, part two of the Lance Armstrong interview pulled in 121 870 viewers on TLC on Saturday 19 January in the 19:30 timeslot in South Africa. It more than doubled the viewership from the 55 981 viewers who watched the repeat episode of part one on Saturday just before part two began.
It's interesting to note that the 220 405 viewers of the first part of the two-parter interview (and the combined 342 275) is much higher than the 200 000 viewers aged 15 and older who watched the Oprah special in September 2012 - also exclusive to TLC.
The September special which took viewers inside her private school for girls at Henley-on-Klip was already a massive ratings-grabber for TLC in South Africa where the special was shown before it was broadcast in America.
Meanwhile DNI has scheduled the next American reality sensation, Here Comes Honey Boo Boo to start on TLC on 6 March at 21:10 which will in all likelihood lead to further ratings growth for the channel as curious viewers tune in.
(The estimated total viewership of the Oprah Lance Armstrong TV special is likely even higher in South Africa given that the viewership of the TLC channel on TopTV is not counted in, since TopTV's channels are not yet tracked and rated individually in this country. Several repeat slots of the episodes on TLC are also not factored into this total which would also make the viewership slightly higher.)
