Top Billing, South Africa's longest-running, uninterrupted TV show has turned 20 years old - a phenomenal feat for television - and tonight at 20:00 on SABC3 Top Billing will celebrate its achievement with a special, nostalgia-laden look-back episode all the way back to 1992 when it all began.
Top Billing - produced by Tswelopele Productions and which has morphed with the styles and times over the past two decades as much as it has been moved from TV channel to channel and timeslot to timeslot - remains South African television's premiere lifestyle magazine show.
The programme introduced viewers to true escapism television, chronicling the high life and high society but from a local South African perspective the past two decades. The show introduced the "glam-look" walk-and-talk TV presenting persona - viewers don't just watch Top Billing presenters - they want to be them.
Top Billing which started out on TV1, then was seen on SABC2, then moved to SABC3 and has been on almost every day on the week in almost every primetime slot imaginable the past 20 years, keeps adapting and molding its content. It's currently the most socially active and most social and cyber media tuned TV show in South Africa.
No other TV property - even more remarkable since Top Billing is on public television and not seen on pay-TV - loads more content onto YouTube, makes more use of on-screen hastagging, and is more in tune with viewers through mediums ranging from newsletters tot Twitter, from fan experience events to presenter searches than this programme - constantly working at cultivating, sustaining and growing its viewers and TV presence.
Top Billing started out as the dream of Patience Stevens, after 20 years still the executive producer of the weekly show which manages to churn out week after week an hour filled with glitz, glamour, decor, design, exotic cuisine and luxury travel.
The show which started in 1992 with the premise of selling an aspirational lifestyle to South African viewers with presenters Michelle Garforth and Neil McCarthy has made true household-name stars out of all the presenters since: Jeannie D, Michael Mol, Basetsana Kumalo, Jo-Ann Strauss, Lorna Maseko, Janez Vermeiren, Simba Mhere and lately even Jonathan Boynton-Lee.
In tonight's episode Top Billing will be looking back at some of the talent Top Billing has discovered. The show will also look in behind-the-scenes of the production and show viewers what it takes to produce a show.
It's extremely remarkable how the show has deftly been able to traverse with tact, tenacity and business acumen the various vagaries and pitfalls through 20 years to not only remain on the SABC and its constantly changing powers-that-be, but by passing, one-by-one the records of all other longrunning magazine shows such as 50/50 which succumbed to breaks in their storied transmission lengths.
Not only does Top Billing, the only real exclusive "get" player within the South African television arena keep showing other lesser-rans how it could be done, but it remains a highly desirable TV property under advertisers, sponsors as well as viewers. To say that Top Billing gets top billing would be unnecessary, tautological overstatement.
