The first episode of Minnie Dlamini's 3-part TV wedding special Becoming Mrs. Jones, that started last week Friday, lifted VUZU AMP (DStv 103) to a channel ratings high with 98 698 viewers.
According to M-Net that packages and programmes the VUZU AMP channel for MultiChoice's DStv satellite pay-TV platform, the first episode's audience rating that's just short of the 100 000 viewership tally "is officially the highest rated show in VUZU AMP history".
There are however two caveats.
In context the audience rating (AR) of 98 698 viewers aged 15 and older for Becoming Mrs. Jones is still very small given the total DStv and free-to-air TV household audience available in South Africa.
That's because the channel is only available to subscribers on MultiChoice's most expensive DStv Premium bouquet, limiting the number of people who have access to it.
Secondly M-Net counts VUZU AMP's start as a channel from its launch out of the existing VUZU channel as October 2014.
It means that VUZU AMP is just 3 years old - so there's not a lot of "VUZU AMP history" as far as AR's are concerned.
On a relatively new TV channel starting from a small viewership base, audience share often rises over time as awareness, incidental sampling and the hours of original or unique programming on it expand.
What is making the Becoming Mrs. Jones debut on VUZU AMP impressive however is that it more than doubled the audience that tuned in for Bonang Matheba's reality show Being Bonang that was also on VUZU AMP filling the same exact same genre and timeslot.
Becoming Mrs. Jones at 98 698 more than doubled the 44 614 viewers who tuned in for the most-watched Being Bonang episode - although it's a TV programming truism than a wedding and wedding reality drama will lure more eyeballs than a day-to-day, cinéma vérité style reality series.
Becoming Mrs. Jones was produced by Beautiful Day Productions with Minnie Dlamini as executive producer for the first time.
