About

The TV Diet does two things:

  1. The TV Diet will be used by MMA to help us analyse the overall TV diet of what’s on offer to the public. We want to do it because we want to get people to think a little more critically about what they watch and then also demand more from the SABC.
  2. The other use is to collect user feedback/audience views and get a sense of what they are watching. Also how it makes them feel. The end result for them is to tell them what their TV Diet is.

In Depth - Why we're doing this?

MMA believes that diversity of programming is essential to our democracy and to meeting the viewing needs of all audiences. Accordingly we are analysing the schedules of what’s on to see not only what is on, but also to look at the variety and diversity of programming available.

We are analysing a range of aspects,including if the programme is local, or foreign, what genre it is, e.g. drama, sitcoms, news, children’s programming, as well as the language it is in. In addition to this we have given each programme a health rating.

We acknowledge that this is subjective and so welcome any comments form you if you dispute the accuracy of the programs. Our basic premise is that programmes that are healthy are those that, help open our minds, either by offering educational or academic knowledge and messages, or they may be news current affairs and documentaries.

We are assuming that knowing what is going on in the world around us is a good thing. Less healthy programmes are those that are there simply to entertain, like some sitcoms, or soaps like Isidingo. Then there are those that contain and promote extreme violence, gender and or racial stereotypes, or that promote consumerism and materialism to the exclusion of all else. Each programme rating is then used to generate our score.

For the moment we only have the four free to air channels, SABC 1, 2, 3 and e.TV. We will add more as the game develops.

Unavailable Channel Schedule?

You may notice that from time to time some schedules are not available. This is because we rely on external sources for our scheduling system, and it's quite possible that they are unavailable from time to time.

Please check back later or report this problem to us if it doesn't appear to be resolved in 24 hours!