In order to find out how many prefer to watch the TV programs, it is necessary to conduct a continuous survey program, which will allow monitoring the preferences of the audience. By changing the TV channels with a remote control, each person tries to create his or her own TV ratings. In order to make the surveys accurate, it is necessary to include various social strata of different ages in the process, who will give an estimate of the rating of a given TV channel.
In collaboration with “IREX Armenia” organization, the U.S. Agency for International Development is implementing a Mass Media program and is gathering data about TV ratings. The program operates in Yerevan, where certain families were chosen in order to survey their preferences. Statistically, the average family should include pensioners, adults, and teenagers. It has been a few months since 120 families in Yerevan have started to watch TV with a special remote control, with which it is possible to follow the frequency of channel change, and which channels are most popular. Each family member has a special button on the remote marked with different colors and they can change the channel only by their button. According to experts, TV channel preferences of 120 families are enough to get a general picture. For example, in France the TV rating is found by testing 1,200 families.
The program, implemented by “IREX Armenia”, was launched in August 2005. Deputy Coordinator of the Mass Media branch of the program, Artashes Parsadanyan, said that in the beginning each TV viewer was marking in a special diary which channel they preferred to watch. This process was done every 15 minutes. However, after this attempt, it was more useful to apply the special remote controls. This device is turned on 15 seconds after the TV set is turned on and after a few minutes it is possible to find out whether the number of viewers of a given channel has increased or not. The addresses of the Armenian families are not publicized in order to make the survey more objective. The families are chosen at random and despite age difference, the families also reside in different areas of Yerevan. This program helps to find out what middle-aged women, or for example, adult men and children watch. It is also possible to find out what channel the viewer skips to and also the number of TV viewers who do not watch a given channel. This data is later analyzed and may be given to TV channels or advertisement agencies. It is important for the ones who make commercials to know what type of audience their product is going to. Certain Armenian TV channels feel the necessity for such surveys; there are also TV companies who don’t consider those surveys so objective.
According to experts, even if there is no urgent need for the implementation of such programs, sooner or later there will be a great demand for them. In order to have a clear understanding of the TV industry, it is important to know what preferences different age groups have about shows at different times of the day. The rating is a great locomotive to find out what the people prefer. A great evidence of that might be the Russian “Anshlag” comedy show, which was taken off the air a few times, and returned on air because the television network saw that it had a large audience. There are no evident leader-channels in Armenia. There are no outsiders either. For example, many people watch the public TV channel during the news program and most of the people that watch are over 50. The surveys conducted in Yerevan over a period of a few months showed that the highest rating among all other shows are comedy shows, entertainment programs and soap operas, and the TV channels which have the greatest number of entertainment shows have the greatest number of viewers. As of November, “Shant” (due to the great number of soap operas) “Armenia” (due to its comedy shows) and “TV 5” (during the hours when “Cube Reality Show” airs) were the channels that had the highest ratings. And children under 14 watch mainly “Dar 21” and soap operas. This rating is both accurate and worrisome because educational and cultural programs don’t have high ratings in any country. And by increasing the number of programs with high ratings we may lose the audience of more developed and professional people. By surveying the Armenian data we may find out that, during prime time (the time when the greatest numbers are watching TV) TV channels mostly show news and political programs and people who are not interested do not have anything else to watch at that time. TV rating surveys may help the TV stations to show a variety of programs during that time in order to have a wider audience. At any rate, this is what “Shogakat” TV station did. They put a cultural program to substitute the political program and got a larger audience. The “Russia” TV channel spent $5 million on filming the “Master and Margarita” movie and during its broadcast refused to air commercials since they thought that the rating is more important than income. And it got a tremendous audience. “A survey like this has never been conducted in Armenia. We are ready to share our information with any advertisement agency and TV channel for free. It’s up to them as to how they will use that information,” said Parsadanyan. Later this information will be sold because accurate information is important for TV competition.