eNCA (DStv 403) remains South Africa's favourite, most watched and biggest 24-hour TV news channel by audience share.
During 2013 eNCA continued to kick dust in the eyes of international rivals available on MultiChoice's DStv platform such as CNN International (DStv 401), Sky News (DStv 403) and BBC World News (DStv 400).
Meanwhile the new 24-hour TV news channels, SABC News (DStv 404) - which launched on 1 August 2013 from the SABC - and ANN7 (DStv 405) - the hysterically mediocre and mistake riddled channel from Infinity Media which launched on 21 August 2013 - have both proven to not be a patch on the massive viewership and audience share that eNCA commands.
Even more telling: the new viewers who did tune in to SABC News and the few who tried ANN7, didn't "steal" existing viewership away from eNCA - the biggest TV news channel in South Africa interestingly maintained its audience share.
South African viewership data (Arianna) for November (December isn't available yet) for the year from November 2012 to November 2013 shows eNCA far on top with a massive ratings lead when it comes to viewers watching TV news channels in South Africa.
More than 50% of all DStv subscribers who tune to a TV news channel, watches eNCA. Sky News trails far below in 2nd place (and has been falling since August), as SABC News showed a sampling spike, and the shoddy ANN7 marred by ongoing bloopers barely registers.
Taking just the month of November (December isn't available yet) eNCA had more than half the total audience share at 54%, while BBC World News, CNBC Africa, ANN7 couldn't get even 5%.
Besides eNCA maintaining its strong lead as South Africa's number one most watched TV news channel in 2013, Sky News, SABC News and Al Jazeera combined managed to pull another one third of the total news viewership.
It's also noteworthy that when it comes to the two new 2013 upstarts, that SABC News which started just three weeks before the bumbling ANN7, has three times the audience of the struggling ANN7.
With a 3% audience share, ANN7 is just one percentage point higher than CNBC Africa which comes in last place at 2% with the least viewers in South Africa.
Further 24 hour TV news channels such as Fox News Channel (StarSat 405) and MSNBC (StarSat 410) are available in South Africa on the much smaller StarSat platform from On Digital Media (ODM) but its a given that that viewership - due to StarSat's much smaller market penetration - is negligible.
