The South African TV news channel eNCA (DStv 403) remains by far the most watched TV news channel in South Africa but its eyeball draw on MultiChoice's DStv platform now comes with another feather in the cap: at 51.45% it has a bigger overall viewership share than all of the other TV news channels combined.
While the eMedia Investments news channel on MultiChoice's satellite pay-TV platform is by far eclipsing much smaller rivals like SABC News (DStv 404) and ANN7 (DStv 405), eNCA in February 2016 managed to lure more viewers than all of the other available TV news channels on DStv combined.
Based on the February 2016 viewership share figures, eNCA, now with the journalism professor Anton Harber as new editor-in-chief since the beginning of March, is now larger in terms of the news audience share on DStv than all the other TV news channels put together.
With 51.45% of the total news audience share, it means that more DStv subscribers are watching eNCA than what are watching Sky News, CNN International, CNBC Africa, Al Jazeera, BBC World News, SABC News, ANN7 and BusinessDay TV combined.
While the SABC receives millions of rand from MultiChoice to provide the SABC News channel exclusively to the DStv platform, it only had a 20.37% audience share in February 2016 - down in fact from a year ago in February 2015 when it stood at 23.33%.
Infinity Media's ANN7 from the Gupta family in February stood at a very low 10.66% share, slightly up from a 10.15% share a year ago.
Tracked over a 12-month period from February 2015, BBC World News celebrating its 25th anniversary, as well as the Al Jazeera, BusinessDayTV and CNBC Africa channels all lost audience share over the past year.
Besides eNCA and its big lead, CNN International (DStv 401) and Sky News (DStv 402) were the only other two TV news channel that managed to marginally increase its audience share the past year.
Sky News (7.24%) and CNN International (4.40%) also happen to be the most watched out of the international TV news channels on DStv.
