In today’s article we will briefly present the viewership of the central News programs of the three main TV channels – BNT 1, bTV and Nova.
Central evening News is traditionally one of the most watched and preferred programs and is a magnet for retaining and attracting audiences.
The chart below presents the average monthly rating of prime time News of the three main televisions for the period January 2020-February 2021:
The sharp rise in interest in the News after the announcement of a state of emergency on March 13, 2020 is very clear. The rating of the central News of BNT 1 increased by 27% compared to the previous month, while on Nova the rating growth was 15%, and on bTV respectively 7%. March 2020 is also the last month in which bTV unconditionally dominates its main competitor – Nova. Despite the pandemic and the state of emergency, Nova continued to broadcast the already filmed episodes of the Bulgarian series, as well as all the entertainment programs, unlike bTV, which postponed the premieres for a future period and bet on reruns. This decision helped Nova central News to take the lead. The beginning of 2021 is difficult for bTV, which starts with a nearly 20% lower rating compared to January 2020. There is no significant change on Nova, but on the other hand BNT 1 can boast of about 25% rating growth in the first two months compared to the same periods in 2020.
In the following chart we consider two age groups – A 18-49 and A 25-54, expanding the analysis and adding the average rating for men and women within these groups:
The female audiences F 18-49 and F 25-54 have the highest rating in bTV and Nova. In Nova this preference is much stronger and the difference in the rating of the two age groups between men and women is about 20% in favor of women, while in bTV this difference is only 6%.
It is more interesting to note that the central News of BNT 1 attracts more attention of men than women and this is a significant difference of the state TV station compared to the commercial bTV and Nova.
Another interesting point in the analysis is the dynamics of the ratings of the central News during the different week days in the considered TV channels. In this analysis, we focused on the audience A 18-49, which is also perceived as a benchmark and is most often used by commercial television to present the achieved results:
The interest in the central News programs is stronger on weekdays, compared to the weekends. The highest number of spectators is on Monday, and by the end of the working week they are gradually decreasing. From the weekends, Sunday is the most preferred by the audience for watching central News programs. Saturday is the day when viewers traditionally indulge in entertainment and less engaging TV content and the audience is least interested in News. The drop in the rating on Saturday compared to Monday is 20% for Nova, 16% for bTV and 12% for BNT 1, respectively.
The average data for the analyzed period also show that throughout the week on average Nova dominates over bTV, except for Sunday, when the prime time News of bTV attracts slightly more viewers and is most preferred among the analyzed audience A 18- 49. As with the commercial bTV and Nova, the central News program of BNT 1 on weekdays attracts more viewers, and the interesting thing is that the strongest day is Tuesday, followed by Wednesday, and Monday is on third place in terms of rating. On Saturday and Sunday the ratings of the central News of BNT 1 are very close.
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