! The biggest exclamation mark on TV this week (and possibly even this year!) belongs to the Generations crisis and COSATU's appeal to viewers to boycott the show in solidarity with the
16 dismissed actors.
COSATU called on viewers
to boycott the show for this week, starting on Monday, 15 September and ending tonight (Friday, 19 September).
What's happened so far? Have audiences been boycotting the show? The answer: a very definitive NO.
In fact, viewership's been so strong this week, the numbers are in the very top region of the show's
usual viewership. On Monday night of this week (15th) the ratings almost hit the 8-million-mark jackpot.
On Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday night of this week viewership averaged 7 882 395 viewers. Figures for Thursday aren't available yet but this is what the first three days of the week look like.
| |
Average viewership |
| Monday, 15 September 2014 |
7 927 520 |
| Tuesday, 16 September 2014 |
7 994 380 |
| Wednesday, 17 September 2014 |
7 720 842 |
When you contrast this with the average viewership for the
final week of July - one of the final week's before the crisis erupted - you'll see that over 200 000
more viewers watched Generations this week than between 21 and 27 July.
7,651,000 viewers watched Generations that week.
With this week delivering such similar numbers between Monday to Wednesday, it's 99.99999999% probable that the numbers will be the same for Thursday and Friday which means viewers love Generations too much and haven't boycotted it at all.
PS: We'll update with Thursday and Friday's ratings when they become available.
For more about how the viewership figures are calculated, please see this article:
The Primetime TV Viewing Figures Explained.