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James Debono
The Broadcasting Authority’s television audience survey has been postponed indefinitely as the National Statistics Office is too busy in its preparations to compile the national census in November.
BA chief executive Kevin Aquilina has confirmed there is no scheduled data for the resumption of the survey, which is carried out by the NSO.
The statistics office has been carrying out the survey since April 2004 with five to ten telephone calls everyday carried out between June 2004 and June 2005 to establish the popularity of TV and radio stations.
“At the moment the Broadcasting Authority is awaiting the NSO to advance in its preparations for the national census so that discussions could resume between both entities on the future format of the audience survey,” Aquilina said.
Although the BA is obliged by the Broadcasting Act to present the results of an independent study on TV and radio audiences by the end of June 2005, the next survey will not be based on a continuos day-to-day assessment over the span of a year.
Further procrastination risks having the authority revert to the past when surveys had become a farce, when the delicate job was conducted by sociologist Prof. Mario Vassallo whose surveys covered just week of transmissions, every six months.
With the regularly timed one-week survey having been public knowledge, it led producers and stations to schedule their tour de force programmes for the momentous week, leading to increased advertising revenues.
Major broadcasting players slotted their most sensational programmes during survey week, with the ‘hottest’ programmes investigating Satanism, the occult and sex during the two weeks of the BA survey.
With the infamous leaks rendering the survey a joke, all this was nearly brought to an end when the BA decided to overhaul its survey and hold it everyday from Monday to Sunday.
But this did not stop this madness as the new survey conducted by the NSO had one big lacuna. The survey, which could establish the most popular stations and their daily ratings, did not determine the popularity of each station by time bracket.
This made it difficult to determine which TV or radio programme generates the greatest audiences.
jdebono@mediatoday.com.mt
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