Afternoon Express Fails To Crack Top Rated Talkshows List

SABC3's new daytime talkshow Afternoon Express made its debut on May 4th with a lot of fanfare and social media buzz. Sadly the big name attraction of the show's hugely famous hosts has failed to attract viewers. 

Afternoon Express was lauded as the new talkshow that will take the television landscape by storm. Twitterverse went crazy when it was announced that our girl "B" will be one of the host of the show. On its debut day, hashtag #AfternoonExpress trended on Twitter and was all over Facebook. 

Unfortunately the show received mixed reviews from viewers from Day 1. The common criticism was that the show was just too similar to another Tswelopele show, Expresso on the same channel. The Times dubbed it "Expresso Reheated". 

Fans praised the production for a beautiful set and that the ladies looked stunning —however my observation and that of some who commented on the show, is that the three ladies lacked a connection that makes a panel format talkshow like this work. 

The other issue for me was that the set always seemed too busy. Too many people on there in one episode.  

While it was to be expected that Afternoon Express will not pull millions of viewers simply because of the channel it is on and the timeslot, the latest numbers for the show are still disappointing given the star power on that hosts couch. 

TAMS has released its Week 9 rating as captured from the 4th to the 10th of May. In that week 4 episodes of Afternoon Express were logged and the results are; 

The show premiered with 329,000 viewers and averaged 356,000 viewers for the week. Thursday, 7 May was the show's most watched episode as it pulled 461,000 viewer. This halved to 230,000 viewers on the Friday, 8th May. 

This means Afternoon Express  now has the dubious tag of being one of the lowest rated talkshows in Mzansi. The top 5 are;

1. Motswako (SABC2)            625,000
2. Eksê Zwakala (e.tv)             477,000
3. Steve Harvey (e.tv)              474,000
4. Katch It With Khanyi (e.tv) 461,000
5. The Talk (SABC1)              454,000

Note that Khanyi Mbau's talkshow ratings have also been dropping drastically while Motswako has retained its position as the highest rated talkshow in SA — a position it has held its entire run bar the 2 weeks when Katch It With Khanyin  debuted on etv. 

It is also important to point out that; while the talkshow genre has become a big industry trend of late, the rating for talkshows have generally declined in general. 

As for Afternoon Express, the show does not even make the Top 10 of SABC3 shows, which are; 

1. The Bold and the Beautiful 1,014,000
2. Isidingo 862,000
3. Days of Our Lives 665,000
4. Billy Elliot 593,000
5. Seriously Funny Kids 593,000
6. Hostages                                 494,000
7. Survivor: Philippines 494,000
8. Nikita 461,000
9. Top Billing 461,000
10. The Game 444,000

Top 10 Shows across all channels are; 

1. Generations (SABC1)                5,491,000
2. uZalo (SABC1)                          5,158,000
3. Skeem Saam (SABC1)              4,865,000
4) Tempy Pushas (SABC1)           4,641,000
5. Muvhango (SABC2)                 4,569,000
6. Mfolozi Street (Reb) (SABC1) 4,016,000
7. Thandeka's Diary (SABC1)      3,061,000
8. Scandal! (e.tv)                           2,877,000
9. Nyan' Nyan (SABC1)               2,831,000
10. iThuba Lokugcina (SABC1)   2,798,000