Reality bytes: When 300 phone calls trump 196,000+ set-top boxes | Silvio Scerri

Silvio Scerri, Chairman ONE TV

In a world where our mobile phones tell us how many steps we’ve walked and our cars nag us for drifting too close to the pavement, Malta has managed to uncover a breath-taking new frontier of technological innovation—the 300-phone-call TV audience survey.

Yes, while GO and Melita quietly collect real-time viewing information from their set-top boxes, sometimes every 15 minutes, our broadcasting landscape has instead been rocked by the profound revelation that a daily sample roughly the size of three busloads of people is all it takes to determine which TV station Malta loves most. Move aside big data; make way for 1990s-style enlightenment.

But let us be fair. The Broadcasting Authority is merely the client, so any spin that the Nationalist Party is trying to weave that ONE TV is attacking the authority is of a nature that would be better spread on agricultural land. The true genius here is the tenderer who clinched the job on the strength of one truly outstanding quality—being the cheapest.

At €4 per call, paid annually over seven years for a total of €85,000, one must admire the business model. Some companies pursue innovation, or excellence, but only the bold pursue the noble art of subcontracting and making money off the 1990s.

This triumphant contractor is none other than M. Fsadni & Associates, whose name was recently encountered not in a research paper, but in this year’s Government Gazette No. 21,396. The bombshell? It’s not every day that a company entrusted with the nation’s audience measurement appears in a court summons for allegedly failing to send official statistical questionnaires and racking up administrative penalties.

According to a judicial publication issued by the Court of Magistrates, Ms Marika Fsadni, in her personal capacity and on behalf of M. Fsadni & Associates, has been formally notified to settle €1,380 in penalties, increasing monthly, for failing to submit two national statistical surveys requested by the Malta Statistics Authority. So far, developments in these proceedings have led to Fsadni and Co. to face contempt of court charges. Quite the soap opera which, if used correctly, could even boost TV ratings by itself.

If nothing else, one must commend the poetic symmetry, especially the irony of it all. The company chosen to measure national viewing habits through phoned questionnaires, now stands accused of not sending its own legally-mandated questionnaires.

Meanwhile, as the tenderer’s phone-calls were concluded, the eagerly awaited results proclaimed a miracle worthy of national acclaim. Wonder of wonders, NET TV, the financially gasping station owned by the Nationalist Party, somehow emerged as Malta’s most-watched channel with a weekly audience share of 23.9%. Celebration came hard and fast, unfortunately without the customary champagne, given the state of this station’s accounts that have yet to see the light of day.

But then reality rudely barged in wearing a GO/Melita uniform and carrying a gift set-top box for effect. The cold shower was indeed freezing. Set-top box data, you see, the very information advertisers and serious TV stations actually trust and pay tens of thousands of euros yearly to access, paints a rather different picture. The Labour Party rightly pointed out that real-time, near-census data from these devices simply cannot be dismissed. Unlike a 300-person-a day survey (for a week), set-top boxes do not forget what channel they’re watching, do not make polite guesses, are not swayed by probable political leanings of the surname calling them, and definitely do not hang up halfway through the questionnaire to go and drop the pasta in the boiling water.

And if anyone dares doubt the scale of this dataset, the Malta Communications Authority recently confirmed that Malta has 196,628+ daily-active TV subscriptions, all capable of generating real-time viewing data. Compare this to a survey that represents about 655 viewers per phone call. 

Faced with this, NET TV immediately declared this data “fake news.” Not because it’s false, of course, but because they have not seen it, simply because they cannot afford access to it. It is difficult not to sympathise. When every euro counts, why would any struggling broadcaster embrace accurate audience measurement that threatens to reveal its advertiser-repelling reality? Far better to clutch at the result of a bargain-bin survey and declare victory than confront the cold, hard numbers blinking back from tens of thousands of Maltese living rooms, what one might aptly dub “reality bytes.”

And so, here we are. On one side, vast, continuous, technology-driven, real-time data from nearly every household with a TV subscription. On the other, a small, once-every-six-months sample masterminded by a company currently navigating matters in the Courts of Magistrates. If this were a competition between methodologies, it wouldn’t be a contest. But as a competition between narratives, well… that’s what TV is for, isn’t it?