Eskom blackouts wipe 5 million viewers from South Africa's TV audience.

by Thinus Ferreira

Eskom's relentless and increasing electricity blackouts in South Africa wiped out close to 5 million South African viewers during prime time from the country's TV grid in December 2022, inflicting ongoing damage to broadcasters who are losing not just audience but the advertising revenue they depend on, and causing havoc with ad buyers' campaigns.

The TV staple of South African television - locally-produced prime time soaps - collectively shed over 4.77 million viewers from November to December 2022 as Eskom's electricity supply continued to sag into late-2022.

These rolling blackouts mean that millions of South African TV households are left in the dark and cut off from their TV sets at nighttime due to Eskom's erratic and constantly changing "loadshedding" practices.

Between SABC1's Uzalo, Generations: The Legacy and Skeem Saam; SABC2's Muvhango; and e.tv's Scandal!, House of Zwide, The Black Door, Imbewu and Durban Gen which collectively represent the most-watched shows in South Africa, the country's available TV audience dropped by a shocking 4 776 251 viewers in one month as they disappeared from the available TV universe measured by television data.

Audience losses on shows on smaller channels like SABC3 and pay-TV service DStv added to the number of lost viewers because of the country's crippling electricity blackouts. 

According to the Broadcast Research Council of South Africa's (BRCSA) TV ratings data for December, SABC3's maximum audience decreased from 588 151 to 519 8080, while a show like Uyajola 9/9 on Moja Love (DStv 157), which was the most-watched pay-TV series in November with 904 082 viewers, shed over a quarter (25.78%) of its audience in just one month to plunge to 670 983 DStv subscribers watching in December.

Looking at biggest audience size for South Africa's terrestrial TV channels, SABC1 plunged from 5.6 to 5.1 million viewers in December, SABC2 fell from 1.72 to 1.54 million viewers, SABC3's already low 588 151 viewers dropped to 519 8080, while e.tv's maximum audience in December lost over 700 000 viewers, dropping from 4.78 million to 4.01 million viewers in December.

A slight drop in TV ratings is expected and does happen during December - since some households measured for South Africa's television audience measurement system (TAMS) and included in the people meter panel go on holiday, don't switch on their TV set and mirror what happens to the audience size during this period.

A massive five million viewership drop in one month however is not normal and extremely damaging and debilitating for broadcasters who lost ad revenue and for advertisers who lost out on the eyeballs they paid for but didn't get and wanted to reach with Christmas sales campaigns.

The secret electricity vampire in your home: the TV decoder in your house.

The DStv Explora which is an example of a digital personal video recorder (PVR).


With South Africa's broken, rundown and out of capacity electricity grid under strain and Eskom constantly warning that, like Scotty, it cannot provide more power and that consumers should switch off more households appliances, there is one more thing you can switch off but probably never will: your pay-TV decoder.

The TV decoder and digital personal video recorder (PVR), sitting there under under your TV set, happily humming along, is an electricity user in your home, with millions of these devices constantly consuming electricity, day and night, all month long, even when in standby mode.

According to The Los Angeles Times these energy hungry feeders have become a big electricity using appliance in the modern home in the United States according to a study by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

As part of the new age of a "connected culture" The TV decoder is the one device consumers don't really think about when it comes to electricity usage, and although not a necessity, the TV set (and by implication the TV decoder box) is the last thing electricity squeezed consumers will probably ever turn off.

Often, even when they're turned "off", that little red or other light that keeps blinking in fact means that the device is still consuming electricity and is in standby mode.

The only real way to stop the electricity flowing is to unplug the power cord.

That however buys into the modern-day consumer's psychological fear of literally being "unplugged" - cut off from the outside world and being connected.

It also makes it more difficult or more cumbersome to reconnect - the long starting up and reboot cycle and the potential loss of downloaded programmes and updates makes it a non-starter for the majority of pay-TV subscribers.

TV decoders and PVRs keep using power even when in standby mode since the hard drive inside keeps spinning along.

Electronic programme guides (EPG) are constantly being updated, and software downloads and on-demand programming downloads happen late at night and during the early hours of the morning which means that its better for the device to stay connected to electricity.

Just like big buildings and companies which will never turn off all the lights, its highly unlikely that millions of TV viewers will ever all completely turn off their TV decoders. And with the strong growth in pay-TV in South Africa and across Africa, the overall power consumption of all of these devices together, looks set to grow on the continent.

Consumers have some limited control. Check the power settings under the general settings options for how long your TV decoder stays in active mode after its not been used.

TV decoders can be placed in standby mode, set to never go into standby, or to go into standby after a set period of time. Standby mode likely uses less electricity (although it also comes with a certain loss of functionality) - perhaps a small price to pay if you want to pay less for electricity.


UPDATE: MultiChoice which runs the DStv satellite pay-TV platform in South Africa and Africa uses TV decoders and digital personal video recorders (PVRs) has reached out to me, and says that it recommends that subscribers never turn these devices off.

MultiChoice says a PVR is not a big electricity using device compared to other devices in the average home.

MultiChoice says if subscribers turn off their devices they will not be getting the necessary updates and downloads and functionality as intended for devices like this.