by Inge Hansen (@mecnotabene) Initially capturing the heart of America as a football star, OJ Simpson later captivated the nation’s interest about a decade ago as 95m viewers in the US tuned in to watch the live coverage of his low-speed police-car chase shortly before his arrest for murder.
The murder trial was a hot water cooler topic across the globe, with the jury being sequestered for a lengthy period of 266 days. In the end, however, it took the jury just four hours to deliver a “not guilty” verdict, which was watched by over 157 million Americans, amounting to 57% of the population at the time.
Not surprising
It’s therefore not surprising that the star-studded cast of FX’s “The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story” has recently been named as the most-watched new series on cable for 2016 in the US As linear and non-linear is reported in the US, the show is confirmed to have had a combined average viewership of 12.7m viewers per week for the first eigjt episodes.
While the original event was touted as the start of gritty reality TV and as a launch pad some time later for the now-famous Kardashians — the initial fame brought to the Kardashian family by Robert Kardashian (on O.J’s lead council team) helped them to eventually create their show — what is surprising is that this series went relatively unnoticed in South Africa. During the initial and repeat broadcasts of the series, the best-performing episode attracted just 23 944 adult viewers. This viewership also occurred in the two-week period of 26 February to 11 March 2016, where Fox Entertainment opened the channel to DStv Compact viewers to expose viewers to its new shows. It could be said that local scandal is more relevant, as seen with the Oscar Pistorius Trial Channel, which had a peak in audience on the two days of verdict delivery in September 2014, reaching nearly 300 000 adults for the Court in Session segment.
The OJ Simpson series did, however, display relatively high PVR viewership, with some episodes even having a higher timeshift +2 days than Live viewing. This may especially be seen with series which are express from the US and shown at unusual times. For example, The Blacklist on M-Net (at 2am) had a Live viewership of 8 580 on 2 February, but the timeshift +1 day audience was 74 680 adults, with the series having a larger timeshifted audience overall due to being broadcast early in the morning.
Growing PVR ownership
Over time, PVR ownership has grown, with the latest AMPS statistics (2015 Jan-Dec release) showing an increase year on year of 1.6% to a total of 10.1%, just over 3.8 m adults. During the same period, there has been an increase in Light (0-1 hour per day) and Medium (1+-4 hours per day) TV viewing, with Heavy (4+ hours per day) TV viewing showing a small decrease from 2014.
Comparing Q1 2015 with Q1 2016, it’s clear that SA has a long way to go to reach the levels of recorded viewing seen by our American counterparts. Although timeshifted viewing has increased year on year, this comes from a small base of less than 2% of the average viewership for pay-TV channels. This could speak to the generally busier life being experienced, where there doesn’t seem to be enough hours in the day to complete work and personal tasks. Having the ability to use a PVR would then provide users with some control over their leisure viewing, enabling the mood and time available to dictate what is watched, rather than falling in with the linear options.
As this trend of exercising control over TV consumption increases, advertising to these upper-market audiences will become more difficult, despite alternative methods of brand exposure that have been put into place on the platform. Although research has shown that brand ads are often noted in the fast-forward format, this will not contribute to the overall TV ratings, leading to higher costs to achieve set KPIs.
References
- Variety: The People v. O.J. Simpson’ Finishes as Cable’s Most-Watched New Show of 2016
- LA Times: The O.J. Simpson murder trial, by the numbers
Following two years at Media24 scrubbing for insights within the magazine division, Inge Hansen joined Nota Bene as an A&I analyst in March 2013. Working across multiple clients, including FMCG, alcohol and petroleum, she has the luxury of working with teams to develop robust insights that drive strategy while keeping abreast of media trends the world over. Inge loves having her pulse on the media landscape but far prefers raising her pulse mountain-biking on weekends. She contributes Thinking TV, a monthly analysis of South African TV viewership figures, to MarkLives. Follow @mecnotabene for regular media updates.
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