The Bachelor SA crosses quarter of a million views on YouTube

Cape Town – On Tuesday night the first episode of The Bachelor South Africa broadcast on M-Net (DStv 101) crossed the breathtaking milestone of a quarter of a million views on YouTube, a first for a show produced for a pay-TV audience in South Africa.

At 252 119 views and continuing to climb, The Bachelor SA has now been seen by more people than the average YouTube audience viewing an episode of Uzalo on YouTube at roughly 220 000 views as SABC1 and South Africa's most watched show on linear broadcast in the country, and the e.tv soap Scandal!'s roughly 210 000 views on YouTube, which is the free-to-air commercial broadcaster's most watched TV show.

The YouTube achievement of The Bachelor SA with Lee Thompson – produced by Rapid Blue according to the dating show format of Warner Bros. International Television Production (WBITVP) – means an unheard of marketing and sampling success for MultiChoice and M-Net as the YouTube number counter continues to explode upwards as people click to view the episode.

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The surprising move to place The Bachelor SA's first episode on YouTube – with the huge number of people who sampled it – could very well lead to a possible permanent strategy shift inside M-Net in the roll-out of local shows going forward.

M-Net placing the debut episodes of local shows online, could help drive possible DStv Premium uptake and aid in show sampling and raising show title awareness under consumers.

If even less than 0.5% of people who viewed The Bachelor SA on YouTube decide to subscribe to DStv Premium to see the rest of the season's episodes it would be a huge MultiChoice plus for the company struggling to retain top-tier subscribers that have declined the past three years with ongoing churn rates.

"You guys are smart for putting the first episode on YouTube," remarked Siba Jack-Pamal in the YouTube comments under the first episode of The Bachelor SA, with Z.Mute saying: "I'm even ready to subscribe".

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