One TV, for the first time, surpassed TVM in audience airtime in November, although the state broadcaster still had more viewers, a survey by the Broadcasting Authority shows.
The BA said it had a total sample of 1,240 respondents with the youngest being 12 year olds. Overall, this sample gives a margin of error of ±2.78%.
Both One TV and One Radio ranked first in audience airtime, which means that audiences follow those two stations more than the other broadcasting stations. TVM ranked second followed by Net TV; while for radio audiences Calypso Radio ranked second with 89.7 Bay placing third.
Television
The BA said 65.1% of the population watched TV during November, an increase of 10.5% over the previous assessment period of July (54.6%); and an increase of 1.4% of a similar period last year (October 2018 – 63.7%).
It gave no reasons, although November was dominated by developments regarding the Caruana Galizia investigation.
The BA said that on average TV viewers spent 1.97hrs watching TV compared to 1.65 hours in July and 1.84 hours in October.
Audience Reach – Popularity
69.1% of all viewers followed local TV stations while 30.9% watched a foreign station.
The biggest number viewers were attained by TVM (34.79%), One TV (20.12%), and Net TV (7.96%). These stations had audiences from all the demographical groups by gender, by age-groups and by district with the exception of Net TV which did not register any viewers between 12 and 20 years old.
Peak audiences of the top three local TV stations were: TVM on Wednesdays with 21.78%, ONE on Wednesdays with 11.59% andNet TV on Tuesdays with 5.19%.
Audience Share – Airtime
One TV ranked first with 26.9% of all the audiences, followed by TVM with 26.3%, and Net TV with 7.6%.
Although TVM attracted more viewers than One TV [TVM:34.79%; One TV: 20.12%]; the viewers of One TV spent more time following their favourite programmes than those of TVM [One TV: 2.64hrs/viewer; TVM: 1.49hrs/viewer].
Favourite programme genres
The most favourite programme genres named by respondents were news (19.4%); local drama (13.8%); discussion and current affairs (11.0%); documentaries (10.5%); and cultural/educational programmes (8.8%).
Radio
More than half of the population [54.5%] listened to radio during November, an increase of 2.5% over the previous assessment period of July.
57.7% of respondents said that they listen to radio every day, 14.7% once a week.
On average radio listeners spent 3.24hrs each, slightly down on previous surveys.
89.7 Bay attracted the largest amount of radio listeners (20.78%); followed by One Radio (16.38%) and Radju Malta (12.84%).
One Radio led in average audiences at 1.915% followed by Calypso Radio at 1.016%, followed by 89.7 Bay, Radju Malta and Radju Marija.
One Radio had the largest amount of audience share [28.2%]; followed by Calypso Radio [15.0%]; and 89.7 Bay [12.2%].
On average, One Radio listeners followed their station for 5.59hrs followed by Calypso Radio for 4.72hrs.