South African television has woken up to the fever of talk shows.
Since the launch of the Felicia Mabuza-Suttle Show in 1992, the country has had more than 20 television talk shows featuring all sorts of personalities, topics and themes but with a common aim to inform, entertain and at times shock.
Who can forget the widely covered on and off-air battle between the country’s first queen of talk, Mabuza-Suttle and radio and television personality Majota “Phat Joe” Khambule, host of the now defunct Phat Joe Live? The latter never missed an opportunity to poke fun at his counterpart’s American accent or looks.
Since then, viewers have been treated to an array of equally innovative chat shows including one, Mojo, hosted by married couple Nkhensani and Zam Nkosi, and another Intimate Connexionz , presented by gay socialite Somizi Mhlongo featuring his ultra-ego, Madam Gigi as part of the act.
Despite this, and the interest these programmes generate from viewers, it is still their international counterparts like The Oprah Winfrey Show, The Dr. Phil Show and new kid on the block, The Tyra Banks Show, that keep many glued to their screens like clockwork.
At the time of going to print, The Oprah Winfrey Show had been temporarily replaced by The Tyra Banks Show which launched in South Africa in August last year.
In just less than a year, the show has managed to attract an average viewership of a little over 800,000, says Tashi Tagg, editor of TVSA, a website dedicated to tracking the performance of television programmes.
“What’s interesting is that there were loads of complaints from viewers when Oprah moved to the early 4pm time-slot. Yet when you look at 3Talk‘s figures it’s not doing as well, which suggests that even though the time is more convenient for people who work, more people are still watching Tyra and Oprah,” says Tagg.
“When The Tyra Banks Show first started it took a bit of time to attract the figures which must have been a combination of being new and also all the confusion as to what exactly was happening with Oprah, but it quickly started bringing in similar numbers of viewers.”
“The problem with most South African talk shows is misplaced spending: Elaborate and distracting sets create a focus on the mis en scene of the show rather than charisma of the talk show host” points out Professor Jyoti Mistry from the Film and Television division at Wits University.
“Not only has The Oprah Winfrey Show spent money on thinking through a simple set, and creating a look for the host Oprah Winfrey which is about an understated elegance, the design of the show does little to call attention to its ‘production value'”.
She says in contrast, South African talk shows draw attention to their sets and lighting which distract from the topic and the engagement between the talk show host, the guests and the studio audience.
“More importantly, the popularity of The Oprah Winfrey Show is predicated on insightful and meticulous research. What stands out about Oprah as a host is the way she works with the information that her research team has briefed her on,” Mistry continues.
“In this respect her credibility on a topic is what makes her authentic to audiences. South African talk shows and their hosts have to change their approach: to develop dexterity for the material they want to showcase. Often it seems that local talk show hosts are trying to garner information about a topic through their show: this is not the way to host a show. An able research team and thorough
“When one looks at The Oprah Winfrey Show, you can see that a lot of money was spent not only on making the host look good but also on the set itself where you see Oprah sitting on the coach with guests and so forth. Also the way in which the studio has been arranged makes it more inviting, it draws the audience in which is not the case with Noeleen’s show, for example.”
According to a Fortune magazine article titled “The Business of Being Oprah”, Winfrey’s show runs on a budget of US$50-million per year, twice the costs of a normal daytime show in the United States.
“The absolute truth is that we do not worry about the numbers,” Dianne Atkinson Hudson, a long-time executive producer of The Oprah Winfrey Show is quoted as saying. “Ratings go down when we do an Oprah’s Book Club show, but that doesn’t matter. We’re getting people to read.”
While the entertainment mogul reportedly does not track her costs assiduously, she is aware of them.
“I did call (her company, Harpo, chief financial officer) Doug Pattison to say, ‘I think we can keep it at $50 million’,” she told Fortune when probed about the high production costs.
Alan Ford, producer of 3Talk says it is unfair to compare local with international productions such as The Oprah Winfrey Show given the existing disparities in their budgets.
“You have to remember that while Oprah has a staff of over 200 people there are four of us,” says Ford.
“Oprah’s show is a multi-billion rand show, we are not. I can’t give away cars even though I wish I could. The point of the matter is that we do a great show, we do in a South African way, and the South African way is not the billion-dollar way. Give me US$7-million to do a show and I will give you an extravaganza.”
While production costs may be a contributing factor, this does not explain why current affairs talk show programme Asikhulume-Let’s Talk has the highest number of followers.
The programme, hosted by Xolani Gwala is screened every Sunday evening on SABC 1 between 6.30pm and 7.30pm. It has an average viewership of one million and an audience rating (AR) of six.
In January this year, Asikhulume-Let’s Talk had a viewership of about 572,000 and an AR of 3.7. By March, the figures had almost doubled.
Other similar programmes such as Lekgotleng le Modise presented by Tim Modise, The Big Question hosted by Masechaba Moshoeshoe, have audience ratings of 3.2 and 2.6 and are watched by 495,000 and 402,000 people on average respectively.
These have also showed tremendous growth even though they are yet to break the 500,000 mark.
In September last year, M-Net also entered the talk show arena introducing one hosted by former CNN anchor Tumi Makgabo.
Head of local productions Carl Fischer says however that the programme did not take off as well as they had hoped it would.
“The programme was meant to run for 13 episodes, and was an experiment for us. We tried with mixed results. It was a success on our part but it didn’t rate that highly at all among viewers. Perhaps it’s because M-Net is not for talk shows,” says Fischer.
April sees the return of The Oprah Winfrey show on SABC which, before it stopped broadcasting, had a vierwership of close to a million.
While Winfrey’s inspirational open book rags-to-riches life-story is partly what has catapulted her to success, the fact that as a black woman, she is not intimidating, is also a contributing factor, adds Mistry.
“Like (former US secretary of States Collen) Powell, (Powell’s successor Condelezza) Rice, and perhaps now (US Democrat politician Chris) Obama, Oprah is perceived by many whites as succeeding because she’s ‘not all that black’ as Powell once described himself,” writes author Paul Street in an article “Change Your Life, Not the System: The Full Effect“, on why Winfrey’s show has such a strong following among white middle-class women in America.
“—she has absorbed dominant white middle- and upper-class ‘self-help’ values and rejects the supposedly obsolete and dysfunctional effort to make white America face up to – and pay for – its racist structures.”
Throughout her show’s 12-year lifespan Mabuza-Suttle faced constant criticism for being too “fake”, or too American, with some saying she’s trying to imitate Winfrey.
“I think the problem is that the world is still looking for the next Oprah,” says Jaco Loubser, producer of relationships talk show Pillow Talk which came to an end early this year.
“What we should be looking for is someone with the same potential and come up with a brilliant talk show that is uniquely South African.”