Here’s Why ONE And NET Were Both Celebrating Being The Number One Private Station
ONE and NET both claimed victory as the nation’s most followed private TV station yesterday – they can’t both be right, can they?
Well, yes and no. ONE and NET both quoted from the latest Broadcasting Authority survey, which should already tell that some selective quoting should be expected.
During a series of phone interviews in late July, 300 people were asked which TV stations they had watched the previous day and were allowed to select multiple options.
ONE won this political battle, with 17.2% of respondents selecting it, ahead of NET’s 16.2%, although the PN station can take some heart with the fact that the gap shrunk from the last BA survey, when it was 17.8% and 14.6%.
However, NET came out on top when the BA calculated how many pairs of eyeballs tune in to each station every week – obtaining 38,315 (16.6% of the total TV audience share) compared to ONE’s 34,452 (14.8%).
ONE actually had a higher audience share (12.8%) than NET (10.2%) the last time the survey was carried out, so that’s another gain for NET.
So why the discrepancy between the results? One possible explanation is that ONE has a slightly larger audience but NET has a slightly more committed one.
In 2021, Lovin Malta and former CEO Chris Peregin filed a constitutional case challenging the constitutionality of a proviso in the Broadcasting Act which allows the regulator not to monitor political party-owned TV stations for impartiality. The case is still ongoing.
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