Expresso turning into a major morning viewership winner for SABC3; keeps growing and building TV audience in its new additional half hour.

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SABC3's breakfast show Expresso is turning into a major morning viewership winner for the channel.

Expresso is showing remarkable ratings growth the past 6 months since it started in October last year, and which is the reason that led SABC3 executives to extend the Expresso timeslot by an additional half hour - a half hour that TV with Thinus can reveal - has already grown SABC3's morning viewership even further from what it used to be.

At the beginning of February I broke the news RIGHT HERE that Expresso, that started in October on weekdays from 05:30 to 07:30 would get its timeslot extended by an additional half hour from April. A month later, in March I broke the news that the April timeslot extention was postponed a bit but it eventually happened a few weeks into April, starting on Friday 22 April - Good Friday - with Expresso broadcasting from 05:30 to 08:00 on weekdays. I can exclusively reveal that SABC3, as well as Tswelopele Productions producing the show, couldn't be happier with Expresso's early morning performance.

Despite the crowded South African breakfast show landscape with SABC2's established Morning Live and e.tv's strong Morning Edition both formidable contenders, the perky lifestyle show with bubbly presenters like Liezel van der Westhuizen and Ewan Strydom immediately lifted the early morning viewership on SABC3 since Expresso's start in October. In the past month Expresso immediately started to lift the viewership of the additional 07:30 to 08:00 half hour timeslot on SABC3 as well.

Expresso, produced from Cape Town and broadcast live, is fast becoming a strong bookend for the SABC3 schedule, kicking off the channel's daily programming with local content that's getting viewers to tune in, and to stay tuned in. Early indications are that viewers gravitate towards Expresso's strong focus on lifestyle orientated segments like cooking and fitness, it's revolving door of local celebrities, and a string of local musicians and artists who are profiled and also perform live. The show is taking a page from the also Tswelopele Productions-produced Top Billing SABC3 primetime show, by creation a softer, glammed-up approach to early morning television. And it's working.

Despite multiple promises to respond following several requests, Tswelopele Productions didn't respond to media enquiries made the past two weeks by TV with Thinus regarding Expresso's spectacular ratings rise for this article. SABC3 did respond. ''The performance of Expresso on SABC3 has been steadily increasing since the show launched in October,'' Lefa Afrika, SABC3's programme manager tells me.

''We noticed that immediately when the show finished at 07:30, the channel lost a lot of audiences,'' he says. ''This meant that there were still available audiences who tuned in just for Expresso, and we realized that they could possibly stay on if the show continued. It was on the basis of this that we decided to extend the show.''

Lefa Afrika says based on SABC3's morning viewership growth in just the past month in the extra half hour, the Expresso timeslot extension was the right decision. ''The performance figures so far have proven us right. TV audiences have stayed with the show, and we have seen significant improvement between 07:30 and 08:00 for SABC3 since Expresso got extended to this time.''