According to a new study viewers are feeling completely overwhelmed by too many TV shows, saying there's so much TV to choose from "that it's hard to know where to start".
While South African viewers complain bitterly about the SABC as well as about repeats and rebroadcasts on MultiChoice's DStv and StarTimes Media SA's StarSat, the latest American study about TV viewing habits indicate that viewers are drowning in a glut of TV programming and choices.
In South Africa the new TV offering has steadily been increasing, with more and more local productions, more local and international channels being added, and several video-on-demand (VoD) services starting all offering overlapping but also exclusive content ranging from MTN FrontRow now rebranded as VU, Naspers' ShowMax, Times Media Group's VIDI, PCCW Global's ONTAPtv.com, and Netflix set to launch in South Africa sometime in 2016.
According to the study from Hub Entertainment Research entitled "Conquering Content", although viewers are complaining about there not being enough to watch, they're actually overwhelmed by too much television. The study found that viewers say there are so many shows to choose from that they've never seen and that's showing new episodes at any given moment that it's hard to know where to start.
The Hub Entertainment Research was done in America doing a survey under 1 200 American TV viewers between the ages of 16 and 74 during the month of October.
Viewers are saying online platforms help them in finding new TV shows and almost 60% of viewers in the study said that they are more likely to choose TV sources that make it easy to find and discover new shows.
The study is good news for South Africa's SABC and e.tv which both started adding and rolling out their linear content to YouTube and online platforms, as well as new SVoD services like ShowMax and ONTAPtv.com.
According to the study, online TV episodes and placing and having content there, creates live TV viewers who would otherwise never have existed.
More than half (52%) of TV viewers say they've first discovered a TV show from an online source, and then went on to watch the same show from traditional non-online sources.
