Television viewing increases over February 2014

The latest audience assessment for February 2015 has found a higher rate of viewers watching television.

The average amount of hours spent spent watching television amounted to 1.98hrs every day, 30 minutes higher than that registered for February 2014.

Over the whole of the population aged 12+ years’ this amounts to 1.35hrs. 

In February an average of 167,000 persons aged 12 and over, said they had listened to radio while an average of 246,400 persons followed at least one TV station during this month.

The data was collected by the National Statistics Office from a sample of 1,120, with the eldest person contacted having been 92 years old.

Full version of the results of the survey www.ba-malta.org/audiences.

TVM remains the most popular station with 36.63% followed by ONE [17.52%] and Net TV [8.09%].

Overall 64.54% of all viewers followed a local station while the other 35.46% followed a foreign station with Canale 5 [5.34%], RAI 1 [3.91%] and Italia 1 [3.91%] being the most followed stations.

Taking all the audiences for all the weekdays and the daily average TV’s audience share attained, overall, TVM ranked first with 31.16%, followed by ONE with 19.11%, and Net TV with 7.18%. 

Of the foreign stations, Canale 5 ranked first with 6.90%, followed by RAI 1 with 4.78%, and Italia 1 with 4.55%.

The study also investigated the most popular television programmes as indicated by respondents.  A total of 109 programmes were named.  Drama programmes were the most favoured with 46.57% of all preferences followed by News [17.17%], Discussion programmes [6.90%] and Entertainment Programmes [5.51%].

Out of all the programmes named, TVM obtained 70.03% of all counts, followed by ONE with 18.37% and Net TV with 8.18%.

Out of all the programmes identified by respondents, the most quoted were:  [1] Iċ-Ċaqqufa on TVM [TVM; 16.09%], [2] Katrina [TVM, 13.55%] and [3] TVM News [TVM; 10.58%]. 

The top eleven programmes most quoted constituted 76.15% of all preferences.

Radio Audiences

When one considers the number of listeners irrespective of the amount of time listened, Bay Radio remains the most popular station with 23.29% of all radio listeners followed by ONE Radio [16.34%] and Radju Malta [11.87%].  Only about 1.81% of radio listeners followed a foreign station.  Bay Radio was the most followed station by all those under fifty years old.  ONE Radio, on the other hand, was the most followed station by all those over fifty years old.

On average all radio listeners spent a total of 2.75hrs each listening to their favorite radio station.  This was 35 minutes lower than that registered for February 2014.  On a national basis over the whole of the population aged 12 years and over, this amounts to 1.13hrs every person. 

Although Bay Radio attracted the highest amount of listeners their total average hours of radio listening to this particular station was at 1.69hrs.

On the other hand, the listeners of ONE Radio have spent an average of 3.58hrs tuned to this station.

Based on the amount of time listened and number of listeners, overall, ONE Radio ranked first with 21.30% of all audience shares, followed by Bay Radio [14.31%]; Radju Malta [11.55%]; and Calypso Radio [11.21%].