Opinion • 1 June 2003

Reality unloaded

We make use of surveys as we please, we quote them if they suit us and we ignore them if we cannot use them. Saviour Balzan takes a look at one of the latest media surveys

Some years back the science behind surveys was a novelty in Malta. Today it is applied widely to reconfirm our worst fears. There are surveys that are public and there are others that are not and then there are others that are tailor made for discerning clients.

This week’s Broadcasting Authority survey was the latest statistical scare to hit the market.

Its biggest flaw was the timing, a week after the national elections.

The statistics proved, here we go again, that the most widely followed programme is, guess what?

The most popular television station is, okay say it.

What the survey did not ask is whether we had a choice.

Did we have a choice?

Are other people being given the chance to produce other programmes?

Your answers are as good as mine.

The week after April 12, was the most unusual week. It portrayed little, if anything; a Maltese public sick and tired of politics.

And yet the survey mongers went ahead and plugged their telephones to the walls and played their questions to a delirious public.

It was a most unusual week of celebration culminating in the signing, by the jubilant Eddie Fenech Adami, ceremony in Athens and the news that Sant was going and coming. That week most people were either on a high, or low down and dejected. Any data collector should have noted this but instead they went on with their little thing as if the whole world was business as usual.

That the Broadcasting Authority chose to conduct a survey in that very week was not only downright stupid but also unwise.

Once again we are offered numbers to imply that half of Malta, or perhaps more, are glued to their television screens with nothing else to do with their lives.

You would get the impression that on Friday evening, Malta’s restaurants are fighting for clients, that Paceville, Bugibba and M’Scala are replicating cities suffering fallout from Chernobyl.

I have never met anyone invited for supper on Friday evening who retorts back and says, "Sorry, I cannot make it, ghax you know, my favourite programme is being screened tonight."

The only time people will have turned down an invitation is when their soccer team is playing.

The same game with numbers can be said for the statistics provided before the election.

Well, after April 12, the people who hosted these numbers games attempted, with limited success, to argue that their results were the closest to the truth.

The truth is that no one knew exactly who would win and with what percentage.

The Broadcasting Authority could do one better if it started gauging value rather than popularity in its attempts to analyse the media market.

With all the talk on content and quality we are still crowning talk shows closer to circuses than ‘getting somewhere’ talking shops.

Yes, being popular does count, but it would be far better if we started seeing some new faces and fresh air in the media market place. Then perhaps we will have a choice.

Television lives off churning out burger type programmes, but on state television one should expect some Michelin rated stuff.

It is the least one can do.