The Broadcasting Authority has published the results of an independent audience research on local radio and television broadcasts for the last three months of 2006.

The Broadcasting Authority resumed continuous audience assessment in October 2006, as it had done between June 2004 and June 2005.

In a statement issued yesterday, the Broadcasting Authority said the number of interviews carried out on a daily basis was doubled while the amount of questions asked to each interviewee was reduced when compared to the 2004-2005 survey.

The data collected by the National Statistics Office for the period October-December 2006 was forwarded to the Broadcasting Authority in the first weeks of January 2007.

All interviews having been carried out by telephone, the response rate was 58.7 per cent of all those contacted – a sampling base of 914 interviewees, 40.7 per cent of whom were male and 59.3 per cent female.

The authority said that due to convergence and digitisation in media platforms, it wanted to find out the use of multimedia platforms by local broadcasting consumers.

Of interest is that most of those who declared they do not have a television set and who view television broadcasts on the internet include people from the 30-49 age bracket.

While just 0.8 per cent of respondents said they do not have a television set, 24.3 per cent still use analogue television systems.

The majority of respondents (66.8 per cent) use cable television, while 6.3 per cent use satellite. Digital terrestrial television systems are used by 1.6 per cent of respondents and just 0.1 per cent use internet to watch TV.

Participants were asked to indicate the radio and/or television station they had followed for at least 10 minutes. They were also asked to specify the duration.

All the replies were classified by half-clock hour slots and analysed to give the broadcasting stations’ audiences per half-hour.

According to the authority’s survey, One Radio enjoys the highest peak percentage audiences, followed by Calypso Radio, Radio 101 and Radju Malta.

As regards television, TVM is the all-time favourite with the Maltese, according to the survey. It is followed by One TV and Net TV, which share a close percentage of highest peak audiences (17.83 and 16.92 per cent respectively). Smash TV and Education 22 share very close highest peak audiences (0.78 and 0.77 per cent).

The survey shows that the most popular foreign television station is Italia 1, followed by the other Mediaset stations, Canale 5 and Rete 4.