The 2.6 rating makes it the highest viewership ever achieved by Comedy Central in South Africa since the channel launched in Africa on DStv in December 2011.

The record rating for Trevor Noah's debut comes with a caveat: MultiChoice opened the channel, which is usually reserved for DStv Premium subscribers, to is lower-tiered DStv Compact subscribers for a week to make the show accessible to a lot more viewers.

Interestingly, the start of The Daily Show and Trevor Noah's debut surpassed Comedy Central's previous viewership record which also featured the 31-year-old: The Comedy Central Roast of Steve Hofmeyr which had Noah as the Roast master in 2012 and scored a 2.0 rating.

What the viewership of Trevor Noah's debut as new host of The Daily Show means, is that almost 10% of all viewers watching DStv, watched Trevor Noah and Comedy Central last Tuesday night, 29 September.

In America the start of The Daily Show with Trevor Noah on Comedy Central grabbed 7.5m viewers where Viacom broadcast the show not just on Comedy Central but across all of its channels like MTV, BET, VH1 and other channels to give potential audience sampling of the new show the biggest possible reach.

Viacom says that on the multi-platform front Trevor Noah's full episode premiere has been streamed over 750 000 times and that clips from the episode have recorded nearly 4m viewers across platforms.

The Daily Show with Trevor Noah is broadcast Tuesdays to Fridays in Africa on Comedy Central at 21:00.

- News24.com