The Times, The Sunday Times way ahead in readership

An annual in-depth survey of all local media, known as the Media Warehouse, has confirmed that The Times and The Sunday Times are the leading newspapers on the island.

The survey has also placed two magazines distributed with The Sunday Times as the leading two publications of their kind in Malta.

The survey is conducted by Informa Consultants, which has been conducting the analysis for six years.

The Times remains the most read newspaper, maintaining a high majority throughout the entire week. L-orizzont rates second throughout the week, followed by In-Nazzjon and The Malta Independent.

For instance, on Saturday, The Times has 60 per cent of the market share. The Times' readership is followed by l-orizzont (18.4 per cent), In-Nazzjon (11.2 per cent) and The Malta Independent (7.2 per cent).

With regard to Sunday newspapers, The Sunday Times is far in front of the others with 46.5 per cent. It-Torca follows with 15.4 per cent, il-Mument with 11.4 per cent, The Malta Independent on Sunday with 10.1 per cent, KullHadd with 7.9 per cent and Malta Today has 3.5 per cent.

The objective of this research is to obtain an in-depth analysis of local media - examining the type of listeners, viewers and readers together with other related factors which are considered to be of help to all parties concerned with the media industry. The types of media analysed in the survey are television, radio, newspapers, magazines, billboards, cinema and internet.

The audience share for radio and television was calculated over three time bands, the earlier one having the least number of overall viewers.

When taking an overall picture at the entire week, TVM has the highest viewership, leading with 47.4 per cent, followed by Super 1 with 27.9 per cent and NET with 21.9 per cent. While TVM registered an overall increase compared with April of 2.9 per cent, Super 1's and NET's overall viewership has decreased by 0.6 per cent and 2.9 per cent respectively.

When looking at the programmes, the highest viewership was recorded during Xarabank, Bondiplus, Tista' Tkun Int, Dejjem Tieghek Becky, Tfal Jigu bil-Vapuri and Delitti f'Malta.

When respondents were asked who their favourite presenter was, the highest counts were recorded for Peppi Azzopardi with 21.2 per cent, followed by Alfred Zammit with 18.4 per cent and Lou Bondì with 11.7 per cent. The most popular female presenter is Rachel Vella.

With regards to radio, Super 1 has increased its overall share, and now has the highest audience share during all time bands.

When looking at the overall audience share calculated over an entire week, Super 1 remains the leading station with 26.3 per cent - increasing by 5.5 per cent since April. Bay Radio follows this with 13.3 per cent, RTK with 12.9 per cent, Radio 101 with 11.4 per cent.

On the other hand, when respondents were asked about their favourite station, 23 per cent opted for Bay Radio, followed by Super 1 with 17.9 per cent, and RTK 12.8 per cent. When looking at the latter results in view of the audience share, it results that Super 1 listeners would spend a longer time listening to the station than Bay Radio listeners would.

With regards to magazines, Sunday Circle got the highest mentions as favourite magazine with 44.7 per cent and is followed by Tune In with 18 per cent and Gwida with 17.4 per cent.

With regard to the awareness of local websites, Di-ve.com once again recorded the highest mentions with 55.6 per cent. Gov.mt follows with 12 per cent and Searchmalta.com follows with 9.1 per cent.

Eden Century remains the most frequented cinema with 57.4 per cent of respondents. Embassy Cinemas follow with 15 per cent and Empire Cinemas with 11.8 per cent.

The research is carried out by means of a survey covering both Malta and Gozo. The total sample was that of 1,001 respondents aged 13 years and over, randomly selected from the Maltese population. The research was carried out between October 20-26 this year.

A full copy of The Media Warehouse research analysis can be bought from Informa Consultants on tel. 2133 5335.