Guess who’s back to save the SABC from international cocaine smugglers bad ratings?!

These days, SABC-anything is generally a synonym for hot damn mess. The programming is lame, the infighting behind the scenes legendary, the transition to digital years behind schedule, they can’t seem to keep a board together, and the government is the concerned parent regularly applying truckfuls of state cash to the many many problems of the national broadcaster each time there’s a new failure.

So, there must be a success story in there somewhere. Some personal triumph, some tale of success against the odds that makes the SABC even a fraction less of a national embarrassment! Well, if you look closely at the ratings of SABC3 lately, it appears there might be one good broadcast decision helping turn their viewership rot around, and we’ll be damned if it isn’t a classic hero we haven’t seen in a while back to save the day.

It’s MacGyver!

That’s right! The mid-80s American hit adventure serial featuring Richard Dean Anderson as the titular Mr. Fix It, who used his wits and his red Swiss Army knife to get out of seven seasons worth of scrapes between 1985 and 1992. The show is still immensely popular in syndication across assorted satellite networks around the world, and the SABC reacquired the rights to it recently for re-broadcast on SABC 3, and what a good decision that was!

Since starting screening MacGyver since February, the show has blown practically all of SABC3’s primetime shows out of the water in the popularity stakes, including high profile fare like Gossip Girl, Top Billing, Survivor and reality singing show The Voice.

According to Channel 24, “with a consistent 5.1 to 5.3 rating on TAMS over the past few weeks, a MacGyver episode pulls roughly 1.54 million viewers.”

What makes this feat even more astounding is a) the fact that MacGyver is not a new show, but a 30-year old library title that the channel would have re-acquired for a fraction of the cost of a new show, and b) that the show is pulling in such ratings despite not being shown in primetime in the evenings. It is screened at 12:00 during the day, during which the viewership should technically be lower.

In any case, this ratings boom will be a boone to channel heads at SABC3 who must join the rest of the corporation at parliament to present their turnaround plan shortly. Hopefully they’ll take note of the MacGyver phenomenon, and make sure to take a couple of DVDs of the show along to parliament. If things in the committee hearing go south, they can distract the MPs with classic TV while they use their red Swiss Army knives to make an escape through a closed ventilation grille.

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[Source: Channel 24]