market, who see that it is
undervalued, that it should be
much bigger than it is. For example,
Disney had a joint venture with
Indian company UTV. When they
recently launched a channel in this
market one of the first things they
did was come to us. They know
that you canʹt plan a channel
without this sort of data.
What is tview aspiring to cover?
At present it covers just the UAE.
This is a reasonable proportion of
the Gulf market, roughly 10%,
which has a spending power that is
out of proportion to its actual
number. We would be happy to
work with other countries if they
want to bring in their systems. The
long‐term aspiration – whether itʹs
under tview or another entity – is
that we have one system that covers
the whole of the Gulf region and
can combine the data from the
different countries.
What are the interesting findings?
We have been fully official since
October 2012 but have had data
coming up since the beginning of
last year. On a very high level the
findings confirm what everybody
suspected. The big popular FTA
channels like MBC are big and
popular. There have been some
interesting findings ‐ more viewing
for niche channels such as cookery
channels, a double hump of
viewing during the day with a real
peak at about 2‐3 oʹclock in the
afternoon when the schools break
up.
We also found that Emirati in
particular love a channel called Zee
Aflam which dubs Bollywood
movies into Arabic. Thatʹs
something that hadnʹt been widely
noticed before. News viewing is
quite interesting – in a recall survey
news is always over‐reported.
When you measure what the actual
behaviour is you find that viewers
turn on for the headlines and then
go and do something else. But if
something big happens in Gaza or
Syria or Egypt, suddenly you get
massive viewing. The news
audience seems to be very much a
breaking news audience rather than
a regular audience.
How do the advertisers react?
The advertisers arenʹt using this yet
to plan their campaigns. They are
looking at the data but because it
hasnʹt been rolled out in the region
itʹs still hard for them to use it like
they would in other markets.
Anecdotal evidence suggests that
the ad agencies have started to
change their behaviour – they are
buying airtime on some of these
niche channels or at off‐peak hours
to get more value from their
advertising. Here in this market
you donʹt buy airtime by ratings
points ‐ which we hope we will
change to ‐ you buy airtime based
on the fact that it is 8 oʹclock at
night and it is in this programme,
and that is the cost regardless of
how many people you reach. On
some of the bigger channels you
have to buy packages – so for
example you only get daytime ads
if you also buy a package of
evening ads.
THE CHANNEL
|
ISSUE 2 2013
|
39
Do people watch a lot of sports?
Yes, there is a huge amount of
viewing for sports like football,
particularly when there is a local or
regional interest. For the final of the
football Gulf Cup where the UAE
defeated Iraq 350,000 viewers tuned
in making it the most popular event
that has been on TV this year until
the recent final of
Arab Idol
.
Sport is a difficult one from the
ratings point of view – advertising
tends to be done as sponsorship or
bulk advertising because it is very
occasional. You can have a sports
channel that has huge viewing for
two hours and nothing for the rest
of the week. Looking at pay‐TV and
sports channels is something that
we will roll out later with the
cooperation of the broadcasters.
The main thing that we try to get
across to people is that this is an
undervalued market that very
much needs to develop. It is
probably a third of the size that it
should be. Having a reliable,
trustworthy measurement system is
essential if it is going to grow.
Chris O’Hearn, thank you.
www.tview.ae
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Top UAE
celebrates victory
in the Gulf Cup
BelowZee Aflam’s
Bollywoodmovies
are popular
among Arabic
speakers
The news
audience
is very
much a
breaking
news
audience
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