TLC FOR TLC: How Discovery's reshaping of TLC in South Africa with compelling content is lifting its profile - and luring the viewers.

It's buoyant hightide for TLC. No single other third-party TV channel available on pay-TV in South Africa is having its profile rising faster as a sudden big-time contender in the must-watch television stakes.

When it comes to providing compelling, appointment television the channel has moved close to the top of the game - the result of some consistent and very careful tender, loving care for TLC.

In two years TLC has gone from just another general entertainment TV channel with a slant towards women's interest on an electronic programme guide littered with non-descript, little watched channels, to now "miss it and miss out status" on the popular culture barometer.

It was just over two years ago that the Discovery Travel & Living Channel launched on On Digital Media's TopTV platform on channel 453 as just another channel.

Yet in just two years the executives at Discovery Networks's Central and Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa (CEEMEA) region which runs TLC and the other group of Discovery channels in South Africa and Africa, took and transformed the channel into an eye-popping and compelling media stopover neither viewers nor advertisers in South Africa can - or in fact dare to - ignore.

Consider this: Within the space of just two years Discovery Networks CEEMEA rebranded Travel & Living to TLC, moved the huge TV property Cake Boss successfully from The Discovery Channel to TLC and added TLC as a channel to MultiChoice's DStv platform (which massively expanded its reach into millions more pay-TV households).

In addition Discovery executives in Europe have clearly been on a frenetic drive to add must-watch and can't-ignore compelling content at such as fast rate for the channel on DStv and TopTV in South Africa that the channel has - as if overnight - elevated itself to another "TLC" status - that of being a definite "Track and Look Channel".

The major ratings climb of TLC under South African audiences is due to extremely strategic programming decisions and clever content acquisition, not only building TLC's viewership and fuelling its huge increase in attractiveness under advertisers but also lifting the channel in the important buzz stakes. Say Yes to the Dress? Say yes to growing buzz.

TLC has fast transformed from wallpaper television viewers would merely click to to peruse what's currently on, to a channel South African pay-TV subscribers now make sure they check the upcoming week's programming schedule of.

Take for instance the TV special in September 2012 in which Oprah Winfrey went inside her Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls.

The special documentary which was broadcast exclusively on TLC in South Africa before it was shown anywhere else in the world grabbed in excess of 200 000 South African viewers aged 15 and older.

It was a massive surge of viewers to TLC, proving that subscribers not only know about the channel and where to find it, but that they're aware of special programming across DStv and TopTV channels and that they will tune in for wanna-watch television when it happens.

The Oprah school documentary on TLC was followed in quick succession by more Oprah.

Oprah Winfrey's interview with Justin Bieber as a once-off episode of her talk show Oprah's Next Chapter which Discovery secured for Africa and South Africa last month (December 2012) was followed just this week again with another two-parter exclusive broadcast with the disgraced cyclist Lance Armstrong of which the buzz couldn't have been more deafening. The biggest winner in the TV channel stakes was of course TLC.

This succession of ongoing waves not only help to bring new viewers to TLC, it also keeps bringing existing viewers back to the channel again and again. Meanwhile all the waves together are making for a solid rise in both viewership as well as channel profile. It's all putting TLC firmly on the map as a can't-ignore TV channel - and that's before the start in March of the Honey Boo Boo.

As guiltily watched as the Kasdashians on E! Entertainment, as slavishly followed as Top Gear on BBC Entertainment and as excessively foamed over in the media as outrageous personalities such as Khanyi Mbau and Nonhle Thema's, will be Here Comes Honey Boo Boo from 6 March on TLC.

Viewers and advertisers who miss the Boo Boo boat will very likely be missing out on the huge buzz - both disdain and delight - the show will undoubtedly create under South Africans. (It created a sensation in created in America where the reality show started towards the middle of last year.)

Watch out Style, FLN, E! Entertainment, Vuzu and BBC Lifestyle. In South Africa it is TLC that's rising fastest in viewers' presence of mind. The TLC take-away? Take notes and Learn from this Channel.

When broadcasting pop culture is your business, it's not a Boo Boo as a TV channel to give viewers exactly what they want and desire the most: an active reason to tune to your channel because of the promise of true appointment television.