The latest audience survey published by the Broadcasting Authority (BA) shows a general trend of decline in the popularity of the flagship evening newscasts during the nine months ending June 2007 for the three major generalist television stations – with NET recording a 33% drop, One TV a 21% drop, and TVM a 9.1% drop. The average weekly share for TVM'S 8pm news bulletin declined from 8.1% during October-December 2006 to 7.69% during January to March 2007, and to 7.36% between April-June - a 9.1% decline in nine months. One News's average weekly audience share for the 7.30pm bulletin declined from 6.56% in October-December 2006 to 5.8% during January-March 2007, to 5.19% during April-June - an overall 20.9% decline. Net TV's 7.45pm bullettin's average weekly audience share declined from 3.39% in Cotober-December to 3.23% in January-March, to 2.27% in April-June - a drop of 33%. The nascent Seven News bulletin on Smash TV practically did not register any audience share, starting with 0.11% in October-December, and rounding off down to 0% in the first two quarters of 2007. PBS registered its main decline on Fridays, with audience share falling from 14.17% (Oct-Dec) to 9.23% (Jan-March) to 7.86% (April-Jun) - a net decrease of almost 7% in nine months. This in spite of popular chat show Xarabank being broadcast immediately afterwards, which enjoys a peak audience share of 21.43% at 9.30pm. And on Wednesdays audience share fell by 6% in nine months, down from 9.23% last year to 6.92%, again in spite of the fact that ersatz Big Brother programme L-Ispjun was broadcast immediately afterwards, reaching a peak audience share of 9.23% at 9pm during the April to June quarter. The only substantial gain in ratings for the PBS news bulletin was registered on Thursdays, with the audience share rising from 3.85% during the October to December 2006 quarter to 10% during the January to March 2007 quarter. It then slid back to 9.09% during the April to June 2007 quarter, making an overall gain of 6%. This is probably attributable to the fact that Tista Tkun Int, the most popular programme on PBS with a peak audience share of 23.48% at 9.30pm, was broadcast on that day. Asked about the declining figures for PBS news, chief executive Albert Debono said that TVM was the only local station to have maintained audiences over the last nine months, with a decrease of 0.9% since December 2006. “This continuous trend of TVM’s high share and stability is corroborated by other surveys too. The highly credible Media Warehouse survey for the January-April period has shown that we have 75% of the news viewership, up from 48% in October 2006.” Asked what measures PBS will be taking to address decline in viewership of the news, Debono said: “Whatever the results, we will continue to improve the newsroom, increasing resources and changing the work practices were necessary. Although it is difficult to measure the quality aspects of the bulletin, we have introduced qualitative measures that are being used by management to ensure there is measurable consistent improvement in quality.” Asked whether the removal of TVM’s most popular programme Tista’ Tkun Int from the autumn schedule would further dent audience share, Debono said: “The PBS schedule is in the process of finalisation and vetting by the relevant authorities and due to this I cannot comment on the position of Tista’ Tkun Int or any individual programme. “However there is a danger in your logic and that is that the level of audience justifies any editorial decision. That is not the policy of this station. If audiences were the sole scope of public service broadcasting, we would have a very different schedule. “PBS’s remit is to provide quality public service programming in part through the grant of the Ministry of Culture but over 70% of our funding comes through our commercial activities. The more efficient we are at generating revenue through our commercial programmes the better we can fulfil our public service obligations,” Debono said. Louiselle Vassallo, Media Manager at Media.Link Communications, questioned the methodology of the BA survey. “I have raised my queries with the BA itself, especially when compared to the methodology used by the Media Warehouse survey. “On the other hand, since this particular data is available to all, I cannot but accept it. When compared to the results obtained in the latest Media Warehouse survey, and in spite of the fact that Net TV and Net News are still in third place, the discrepancy in the results is rather substantial. “Still, our policy is to accept these results in our commitment to give the best service to our viewers and, thus, increase our audiences.” Vassallo said Media.Link was working on all aspects of Net News. “I trust the results will be well received once the broadcast is launched as part of the 2007 Autumn schedule.” Gerald Fenech, newly appointed News Manager at Smash TV, was curt in his reply over Seven News dismal rating. “At this stage, we are not in a position to comment on your questions”. There was no reply by One Productions at the time of going to print despite various attempts to get a comment from Managing Director Michael Vella Haber, who is on leave this week.

Links: www.maltatoday.com.mt/2006/01/08/t18.html