|
Karl Schembri
Television production company Where’s Everybody? has proposed holding an audience survey for the national broadcasting company, PBS, as well as a total rebranding exercise of the station, despite its massive involvement in programmes for the same station.
The company, which produces Xarabank and Bondiplus, has submitted its proposal more than a month ago as part of a generic tender to give a new corporate identity to the station, develop a website portal and produce new PBS brands.
In its proposal, Where’s Everybody? has suggested holding a daily viewership survey and analysis for PBS for Lm6,500, and another “perceptions survey” for Lm1,200 on a sample of 1,200 respondents or Lm500 for 300 respondents.
The same production company is proposing a marketing plan, consultation services, new jingles and a public relations campaign which would include the design and production of billboards and posters.
The call for offers closed on 22 July but it is still unclear whether PBS has adjudicated the tenders. PBS Chairman Andrew Agius Muscat told MaltaToday to send its questions in writing when contacted Friday but no replies reached this newspaper.
Asked about the conflicts of interest of his company if it gets the tender, Where’s Everybody? director and presenter of Bondiplus, Lou Bondì, said he saw no conflict.
“The question is whether the viewership survey is professional or not, whether it is truthful or deceiving,” he said. “We’ve offered it as part of a very wide range of services we can give to PBS, but so far we have no idea whether they were accepted or not.”
Bondì said Where’s Everybody?’s surveys are in any case contracted out to Telepage, which conducts regular opinion polls by telephone for Xarabank.
“Ultimately, if our proposal gets accepted, the survey itself will be up for approval by PBS, so all the questions would have been evaluated by the station,” Bondì said. “We won’t be manipulating the questionnaire or asking people whether they believed Xarabank or Bondiplus are the best programmes on air.”
Still, Where’s Everybody? has attracted some acerbic criticism because of its involvements in diverse activities beyond its core journalism business through its subsidiaries and partnerships. These included Welcomeurope, which organised Malta’s celebrations for EU membership, and Welcomevents, which has won the tender for organising the opening celebrations for the opening celebration of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in November this year.
Steering the corporate rebranding and holding audience surveys for a station that carries his own programmes – with Xarabank being effectively the station’s most followed programme on Fridays – may well pit Bondì and his partner, Peppi Azzopardi, against even more critics in new controversies for the months to come.
Asked whether they were proposing Xarabank’s ‘X’ logo as the new PBS corporate symbol, Bondì replied jokingly: “No, it’s B+”.
karl@newsworksltd.com
|
