Times of Malta has again emerged as by far the country’s most popular news website while continuing to increase its share of the online news market, according to the Broadcasting Authority survey published on Friday.

The authority’s Audience Survey in December found that of those who prefer to follow the news online, 61% said timesofmalta.com was their first choice.

This represented a 9% increase from the last survey carried out in July, when the website took 56% of the vote, and was more than double the total share of all other included news sites in Malta combined (27%).

Meanwhile, 11% of those surveyed said they followed Malta’s various news sites equally to get their news.

Times of Malta is the most popular source of news for all ages, with over half of all age groups listing the site as their preferred news site. The website was especially popular among those in their 30s and 40s, with 66% and 75% of those age groups listing it as their first choice, respectively.

Lovin Malta continued to be the second most popular news site, growing its market share slightly to just over 10%, followed by TVM, Newsbook and The Shift, all of whom registered under a 5% share.

The Broadcasting Authority commissions regular surveys to assess the viewership of TV, radio and online content by Maltese residents aged 12 and over. The survey was carried out between November 26 and December 2 among 2,100 members of the public.

Growth in online video viewership 

Times of Malta was the third most popular platform for watching Maltese programmes solely produced for online, with 32% of viewers saying they visited the website for such content.

This was less than two percentage points behind YouTube (34%) while Facebook continued to dominate with 89%.

Interviews and features produced by Times of Malta also proved popular, with content featuring journalist Mark Lawrence Zammit singled out as being a favourite.

With 11% of respondents saying they preferred the news platform's programmes, this was just behind similar features produced by Lovin Malta (13%) while the Jon Mallia Podcast led with 24%.

TV continues to be most popular medium 

Television continued to be the country’s most popular medium for news, with 54% of Maltese residents listing it as their first choice. This was followed by online news sites (21%) and Facebook (17%).

TVM remained the most popular station for news, growing its audience by 13 percentage points to reach 56% of the audience share, followed by ONE (22%) and NET (20%). The TVM news bulletin was the most popular local TV programme.

And while news remained the most popular type of local TV programme, its popularity had dropped by eight percentage points to 77%.

Almost 62% of all TV viewers said they watched one to two hours of local TV per day, according to the survey.

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