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SABC3 has a bona fide winner in its perky new lifestyle morning show Expresso done live from Cape Town on weekdays which has immediately double the viewership in the early morning timeslot for the channel.
''From our analysis when we took over that slot, the minimum viewership was 30 000 and we've got it up to about 60 000 viewers. Expresso has now reached peaks of 300 000 and even 350 000 but it depends on the content,'' Patience Stevens, director of Tswelopele Productions and executive producer of Expresso tells me when I asked her and SABC3 how the show is performing compared to what it replaced.
''Now what we're working out is what's the most popular days for viewers tuning into Expresso, what's the most popular kind of content viewers love to see,'' Patience Stevens says. ''We want to try and see if we can consistently reach that higher viewership levels. We had the Miss South Africa finalists on, and we suddenly got this massive viewership of between 300 000 and 350 000 viewers. That is absolutely massive for that time of the early morning. Basically what we're doing now is tweaking. There is a big growth in that slot on weekdays.''
''We're also getting a great response from people like advertisers who want to advertise,'' Risuna Mayimele, SABC3's marketing manager tells me. ''Expresso is doing very well. If you think about it, in the morning at that time on television, nobody is catering for the Afrikaans market. Also, not everyone wants to see news in the morning. There definitely was the gap for a lifestyle show - people want to know what to wear, what's the weather going to be like, the traffic . . . so ja. We've had a good response.''
